HELSINKI — Japan’s space agency made contact with its SLIM moon lander Sunday, despite the spacecraft not being expected to function after lunar night.
Contact with the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) spacecraft was reestablished on Sunday, Feb. 25, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced via its dedicated SLIM account on X, formerly known as Twitter, early Feb. 26.
The mission team received telemetry from SLIM around 5:00 a.m. Eastern (1000 UTC). The temperature of the communication equipment was extremely high, according to JAXA, due to the sun being high over the landing area. Communication was terminated after only a short period of time, JAXA stated.
The SLIM team is however now preparing to conduct observations with SLIM’s multiband spectroscopic camera (MBC) later in the lunar day. MBC is designed to ascertain the composition of the lunar surface and could provide insights into the moon’s history. Sunset over Shioli crater, on the rim of which SLIM landed, will occur Feb. 29.
SLIM was not designed to survive the deep cold of lunar night. Temperatures fall below minus 130 Celsius during the roughly 14-Earth-day lunar nighttime, damaging electronics. Other spacecraft have used radioisotope heater units to provide heating during lunar nights to allow prolonged operations.
The spacecraft—also referred to as “Moon Sniper” for its objective of making a precise landing—made its historic landing…
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