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Well, you’ve got to hand it to Japan’s space agency, they know how to put a positive spin on things. Japan joined the latter-day Moon race by landing its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM), nearly a fortnight ago. As the Japan Times reported, the lander touched down just 55 meters from its target — which is admirably precise.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) had aimed to land within 100 meters of a target site, much more precise than the several to tens-of-kilometers range seen in conventional lunar missions.
It sounds like it was all smooth sailing for SLIM.
“We have confirmed that SLIM succeeded in making a soft landing within the accuracy of 100 meters at 12:20 a.m. (Saturday),” Hitoshi Kuninaka, director-general of JAXA’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, told a news conference.
Officials also said that they would give themselves a “full score of 100 points” on the high-precision landing part of the mission, as SLIM would have likely landed within 10 meters — or perhaps even just 3 to 4 meters — away from the original target. Instead, it autonomously moved its landing spot to avoid obstacles, using its “smart-eyes” technology.
Most impressive!
There was just one teensy problem…
Everything was going smoothly and as planned until the lander reached an altitude of 50 meters, at which point one of the two main engines was lost, most likely due to an “external factor,” SLIM project manager Shinichiro Sakai said, without elaborating on what that might have been. An onboard camera captured a nozzle of the engine lying on the moon’s surface, suggesting that the engine fell to the ground, he said.
Perhaps the engine was built by Boeing?
And the engine falling off had an, ah, unexpected consequence.
The trouble with the engine meant that SLIM swayed sideways as it approached the moon’s surface and it actually landed upside down, officials said.
That, in technical terms, is what they call a “biggie”.
As a result, solar cells on the lander could not generate power and the only power came from the onboard battery.
Japan Times
Luckily, SLIM released its two rovers before it face-planted in the moon dust. It also managed to operate its own cameras for 45 minutes, before mission control shut off its battery to conserve power. Eventually, though, the Moon’s rotation brought the panels around to face the Sun long enough to power up some of its functions again.
Still, just by even touching down, SLIM has ushered Japan into a select club.
SLIM’s successful touchdown at 12:20 a.m. on Jan. 20 has added Japan to a list of only five countries in the world to have made a soft landing on the moon, joining the ranks of the former Soviet Union, the United States, China and India. The project is being studied and developed in cooperation with researchers from universities and other organizations across the country, with JAXA playing a central role.
Japan Times
Already, Japan is preparing to launch another lunar probe in conjunction with a regional partner — and, like the original Space Race, it’s a mission that has as much to do with terrestrial geopolitics as science. Japan will team up with Taiwan to launch that country’s first Moon mission, the Deep Space Radiation Probe developed by National Central University (NCU) of Taipei.
