According to the space agency, Japan's Moon lander has started up again, suggesting that power has been restored, on X (previously Twitter). "We were able to get in touch with SLIM last night and we are back in business," JAXA posted on the microblogging platform. "We immediately started scientific observations with MBC, and have successfully obtained first light for 10-band observation," the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said, referring to the lander's multiband spectroscopic camera.
With the landing earlier this month, Japan joined the US, the Soviet Union, China, and India as the only countries to have successfully completed a soft lunar landing. However, JAXA had stated that it was unable to verify that the lightweight craft's solar batteries were producing power following the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM)'s landing.
SLIM is a light spacecraft roughly the size of a passenger car that was intended to strike a very small target. It made use of "pinpoint landing" technology, which offers significantly more control than any other lunar landing technique. SLIM's target was only 100 meters (330 feet) away, whereas the majority of earlier probes employed landing zones that were roughly 10 kilometers (six miles) broad.
According to JAXA, the primary objective of the mission is to test new landing technology that would enable moon expeditions to land "where we want to, rather than where it is easy to land." In the event that the landing was successful, the spacecraft would use a specialized camera to analyze minerals in an effort to uncover evidence regarding the moon's origin. The SLIM was intended to land close to the Shioli crater, which is close to an area covered in volcanic rock. It was fitted with a pad to lessen the impact.
Ten days had passed since a US private company's moon mission failed due to a fuel leak that the spacecraft developed hours after launch, which made the trip much anticipated. September saw the launch of SLIM atop a Mitsubishi Heavy H2A rocket. It began its orbit around Earth on December 25 and moved into lunar orbit.
