Japans

Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) has been resurrected, over a week after the probe ran out of electricity following its troubled lunar touchdown on January 20th, leaving it upside-down and its solar panels pointing in the wrong direction. On Monday, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced that communication with the SLIM spacecraft had been re-established, and operations to hunt for clues about the Moon’s origins had resumed.JAXA had predicted that a change in sunlight direction could…

Japan's Moon lander has sent back its first images of the lunar surface, showing a gray, rubble-covered world in incredible detail.Beautiful as it is, this lonely view is where the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) sits upside down indefinitely.The photos are bittersweet, captured shortly before the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was forced to switch off the uncrewed lander. As of now, it's unclear whether it will switch back on.A lunar surface scan mosaic image captured by the SLIM-mounted MBC.…

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NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image of the JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) SLIM lander on the Moon’s surface on Jan. 24, 2024. SLIM landed at 13.3160 degrees south latitude, 25.2510 degrees east longitude, at an elevation of minus 2,992 feet (minus 912 meters). The image is 2,887 feet wide (880 meters), and lunar north is up. (LROC NAC frame M14607392143L). Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State UniversityJAXA’s SLIM lunar landing on January 19, 2024, captured by NASA’s LRO, establishes Japan as…

Thanks to a pair of tiny lunar rovers, the mystery of Japan's crippled SLIM Moon lander has been solved. Images returned by the two robots show that the spacecraft bounced and is sitting on its nose, preventing its solar panels from charging.When JAXA's SLIM spacecraft touched down on the Moon on January 19, 2024, it was a real cause for Japan to celebrate. Not only was the country the fifth to successfully land on our satellite, it did so with an unprecedented degree of precision. Unfortunately, while the lander was…

Earlier this month, Japan’s highly-anticipated moon mission, the SLIM lander (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon), successfully landed on the lunar surface with pinpoint precision. However, shortly after landing, JAXA turned off the SLIM lander, citing an issue with the solar panels pointing west, away from the Sun. Now, we finally know what happened.According to a statement and a newly released photograph of the lander, JAXA says that it appears to have landed on its nose, with its main thrusters pointing up…

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Company shared the first image of its lander on the lunar surface, revealing that the spacecraft touched down on the moon upside-down. It’s a remarkable recovery for the spacecraft, which experienced an “abnormality in the main engine” that affected the landing orientation when it was just 50 meters above the lunar surface, JAXA said in an update Thursday. Despite this abnormality — which resulted in the spacecraft’s solar panels being unable to charge, because they are not oriented…

The saga of Japan’s lunar lander continues to unfold, with the first images of SLIM on the surface of the Moon revealing the unfortunate position the spacecraft has ended up in.China's Plan to Land Astronauts on the MoonNearly a week after the SLIM lander touched down on the Moon, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) released an image of its spacecraft taken by a tiny rover called Sora-Q, which arrived on the Moon with SLIM. The image shows SLIM in a bind, with its thrusters pointed upward and, worst of all, its…

Shortly after Japan’s space agency became the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the surface of the moon, its scientists discovered the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) unfortunately touched down upside down. The said that the SLIM landed on the lunar surface on January 20 but it knew it might have bigger problems due to an issue with Just hours after making landfall, JAXA expected the power to run out, before it ultimately did.SLIM met the moon’s surface about 55 meters east of the original target landing…

Japan is now the fifth nation to perform a soft landing on the Moon, joining the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and India. The unmanned SLIM, nicknamed the "Moon Sniper" for its precision technology, successfully touched down within 55 meters of its targeted landing spot…