Japan's Moon Lander Is Back Online As Sunlight Conditions Improve At Landing Site

Japan's Moon lander is back online. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said on January 29 that communications with Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) has been re-established and operations to study lunar surface have begun.

"Communication with SLIM was successfully established last night, and operations resumed! Science observations were immediately started with MBC, and we obtained first light for 10-band observation," JAXA said in a statement.

Communication with SLIM was successfully established last night, and operations resumed! Science observations were immediately started with MBC, and we obtained first light for 10-band observation. This figure shows “toy poodle” observed in multi-band observation. pic.twitter.com/WYD4NlYDaG

— 小型月着陸実証機SLIM (@SLIM_JAXA)

As part of operations, lander is studying rocks (shown in image below) lying around landing site and first target is a rock named ‘Toy Poodle.’

" team is sorting out rocks of interest, assigning a nickname to each of m, with intent of communicating ir relative sizes smoothly by names," space agency furr said.

mission team was waiting for sunlight to fall on SLIM's solar cells after it got disoriented during landing on January 19. agency even released a picture, taken by one of SLIM's two tiny rovers, of Lander lying nosedown on lunar regolith.

Since cells were not receiving any sunlight, SLIM h no electricity and thus lunar experiments h not begun. Japan has lost a considerable amount of time which could have been used for exploration right after landing. Similar to Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander and Pragyan rover, $120 million SLIM mission could end once lunar night begins at landing site because paylos are not designed to temperatures as low as -130° Celsius. 

SLIM was launched in September 2023 with objective of making a precision landing within a 100-meter-area on rim of Shioli crater on near side of Moon. JAXA said that precision landing objective was complete, although it was about 55 meters away from target point. reason for this was loss of thrust in one of its two engines which me SLIM drift away from its target point.