Japanese probe on the Moon may run out of electricity – DW – 01/20/2024

Japan became the fifth country to successfully land on the Moon on Saturday (01/20/2024), but its SLIM probe is running out of power due to a problem with its solar panel system.

After 20 minutes of descent, Japanese space agency JAXA said its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) landed on the moon’s surface and was able to establish communications.

But the solar panels stopped working, so the probe, nicknamed the “Moon Sniper” for its precision technology, will only have a battery for “a few hours,” said JAXA’s Hitoshi Kuninaka.

Mission officials prioritized collecting data while they could, although Kuninaka suggested the batteries could start working again once the angle of sunlight changes.

Is the panel facing the wrong way?

“It is unlikely that the solar panel has failed. It may not be pointing in the direction originally intended,” he told a news conference.

“If the descent had not been successful, it would have crashed at a very high speed. If this had been the case, all the work of the probe would have been lost,” he explained.

“But it sends data back to Earth,” he added.

SLIM is one of many new lunar missions that countries and private companies have launched in the 50 years since Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.

But emergency landings, communication failures and other technical problems abound. So far, only four countries have succeeded in this mission: the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India.

In search of the Moon’s mantle

JAXA hopes to be able to analyze data collected during the lunar landing, which will help determine whether the probe achieved its goal of landing within 100 meters of its planned site.

SLIM would have landed in a crater where it is believed to be able to access the Moon’s mantle, the layer beneath the crust that is usually found at great depths.

The two probes were successfully deployed, JAXA said. One is equipped with a transmitter, and the other is designed to move across the lunar surface and send images back to Earth.

jc (afp, ap)