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The Japanese space agency, JAXA, today announced a possible explanation for why its lunar lander is not capable of generating force from its solar panels: the spacecraft landed upside down.
While the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) successfully landed softly on the Moon on 20 January, engineers soon discovered that the craft was unable to generate power. It was then put in safe mode until further investigations were carried out. Today, JAXA released an image taken by a small lunar rover, ejected by the craft before it landed, which shows SLIM on its nose.
SLIM was introduced on September 7, 2023, from the Tanegashima Space Center on Tanegashima Island aboard an H-IIA release vehicle. It took off in parallel with the X-ray imaging and spectroscopy mission.
One of the main objectives of SLIM is to demonstrate a high-precision “vision-based” landing to drop the craft within a hundred m of the target site. These are typical lunar landing sites that can be enlarged for several kilometers.
For this purpose, SLIM is equipped with a laser rangefinder, a camera and a radar. Combined, they measured altitude, photographed the lunar surface, and the altitude and speed of the spacecraft as it descended to the surface.
JAXA claims that just before landing, SLIM lost thrust to one of the two main engines. Even so, the spacecraft still controlled the landing about 55 m east of the original landing site, with the spacecraft touching down within 10 m of the landing site selected by the spacecraft’s real-time navigation system. “It is moderate to mention that the generational demonstration of the exact landing. . . has been completed,” said a JAXA.
Shortly before landing, SLIM released two small demonstrator lunar rovers. A small baseball-sized robot dubbed Lunar Excursion Vehicle-2 (LEV-2) as well as LEV-1, a lunar rover with a mass of 2.1 kg, which moves via a hopping mechanism.
Japanese Hakuto-R spacecraft crashes on landing
LEV-2, however, managed to take a symbol from SLIM and transmit it to Earth LEV-1. The photo, released today, shows SLIM face down on his nose. JAXA also released a symbol of the lunar surface taken through the multi-band camera.
JAXA says that because of this orientation, SLIM’s solar panels are oriented to the west, suggesting that power generation would possibly be imaginable as “solar lighting improves over time. “The local firm says it will now continue to “acquire additional technical and clinical data. “from the area.
Thanks to this convenient landing, Japan becomes the fifth country to effectively land a spacecraft on the Moon, after the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and India.
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