TOKYO (Kyodo) — A Japanese lunar rover has resumed operations and resumed its journey to the moon to explore its origins after a successful landing earlier this month, the country’s space agency said Monday.
The smart lander for studying the moon’s built-in solar panels, or SLIM, likely started generating electrical power after failing because the panels didn’t look well at the sun upon landing, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.
The company has been communicating with the spacecraft since Sunday afternoon, and the rover’s multiband camera has resumed taking over the moon’s surface and its operations are expected to continue for several days, he said.
It is looking for a mineral called olivine originating from the Moon’s mantle, a rocky inner layer that surrounds its core, the agency said, adding that the camera can scan and carry out an analysis of the olivine’s composition.
Comparing the mineral with samples found on Earth and looking for similarities could provide evidence for the “giant-impact hypothesis,” which suggests the Moon was formed by the Earth impacting with another planet some 4.6 billion years ago, according to JAXA.
Japan introduced SLIM on January 20, becoming the fifth country to achieve this feat after the former Soviet Union, the United States, China, and India.
It landed approximately 55 meters from the target site, completing a separate project of making an exact landing within a radius of one hundred meters.
The rover had a positioning accuracy of less than 10 meters, perhaps between 3 and four meters, before it began performing descent maneuvers to avoid obstacles on the lunar surface, JAXA said.
Previous Moon landers had an accuracy of within several to around a dozen kilometers, with operators opting to have them descend in areas conducive to easier touchdowns, according to the agency.
SLIM landed around Shioli Crater in a low-lying region known as the “Sea of Nectar,” as expected, but its orientation was incorrect, causing the solar panels to face west, away from the Sun.
Since the solar panels weren’t working, the device ran on battery power for several hours before everything shut down. During his time travel, he managed to take some pictures of the Moon’s surface.