Japan's long-planned intelligent lunar research lander has successfully landed on the lunar surface, making the nation the fifth in history to do so. But not everything is well for SLIMwhich may have a limited lifespan due to problems with its solar cells.
in a Press conference Following the early morning (local time) landing on the Moon, JAXA and mission managers explained that “the soft landing was in itself a success; SLIM has been communicating and receiving commands. However, it appears that the solar cell is not generating electricity at this time.”
Solar cells can be complicated, as can the rest of the electrical workings in a space (let's be honest, everything is usually pretty complicated), so the team hasn't been able to identify the problem yet. However, since the other sensors are working correctly and showing healthy values, they are confident that it is limited to the solar cells themselves.
Of course, running on battery power is not a long-term solution, and if they can't get the cells online, the main lander will only have a few hours of life (and, in fact, it may already be dead by now). reaching the end of its useful life). that).
The country and the organization must be congratulated for their achievements; Landing on the Moon is no easy task, and in fact, multiple nations and private companies have attempted it in recent years, none of which have been successful. Something as small as a stuck valve (as in the recent Astrobotic mission) can derail a lunar attempt.
There is some speculation based on telemetry that the lander may have tilted or be in some non-optimal physical configuration, but so far JAXA has no confirmation of this. The initial press conference was primarily to announce the initial success of a soft landing and a working lunar lander.
However, the team noted that the two lunar excursion vehicles carried by SLIM appear to have deployed successfully. These two sub-ships separated from the main vehicle while it floated a few meters from the surface and will operate semi-independently from it.
Rendering of what the LEV-1 deployment could look like during landing.
LEV-1 and LEV-2 (as they are called) should be able to capture images of the landing area and SLIM itself, but “unfortunately it's not something we can show you right away,” they said. Assuming the subvehicles work, they should send that information back shortly.
This story is developing, we will update it as new information becomes available from JAXA.
