Japan’s Moon lander SLIM powers up on lunar surface, takes pic of ‘toy poodle’ | Trending

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) took to X on January 29 to share that communication has been established with its Moon lander, and operations have been resumed. Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) is now taking pictures of the lunar surface and transmitting them to the Earth. Japan: The picture shared JAXA shows the ‘toy poodle’ on the surface of the Moon. (X/@SLIM_JAXA) Despite a precision touchdown on January 20, the craft landed upside down, leaving its solar panels unable to see the sun. As a result, JAXA used battery power to gather information about the landing and the surrounding environment. After that, the spacecraft was turned off and put on hold until the sun rose higher in the lunar sky. HT has launched it’s new Cricket page. Click here to know more! SLIM is now analysing the composition of olivine rocks on the lunar surface using its multi-band spectral camera. The space agency hopes to discover more clues about the Moon’s origin and evolution through this analysis. Previous observations suggest that the Moon may have been formed as a result of a collision between Earth and another planet. JAXA shared a picture of the rocky lunar surface and named it ‘toy poodle’. The caption to the picture reads, “Communication with SLIM was successfully established last night, and operations resumed! Science observations were immediately started with the MBC, and we obtained first light for the 10-band observation. This figure shows the ‘toy poodle’ observed in the multi-band observation.” The space agency also recognised NASA’s role in spotting SLIM and wrote, “This is another great example of international collaboration on the lunar surface.” NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted SLIM while flying about 50 miles (80 km) above the Moon’s surface on January 24. Earlier, the space agency shared a picture of the SLIM spacecraft on the surface of the Moon and wrote, “The Lunar Excursion Vehicle 2 (LEV-2 / SORA-Q) has successfully taken an image of the #SLIM spacecraft on the Moon. LEV-2 is the world’s first robot to conduct fully autonomous exploration on the lunar surface.” It added, “The LEV-2 image shows how SLIM sits on the lunar surface, confirms the LEV-2 transformation from a closed-sphere to mobility-enabled mode, movement, camera image acquisition, selection of high quality images for download, and LEV-1/LEV-2 inter-robot communication on the Moon.” The landing made Japan the fifth country to land on the Moon, following the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and India. About SLIMSLIM is a lightweight spacecraft about the size of a passenger vehicle which was launched on a Mitsubishi Heavy H2A rocket in September 2023. After orbiting Earth, it entered lunar orbit on December 25, 2023, to land near the Shioli crater in a region covered in volcanic rock. Unlike most previous probes that landed in zones of about 10 kilometres (6 miles) wide, SLIM aimed at a target of just 100 meters (330 feet). It used ‘pinpoint landing’ technology that promised far greater control than any previous moon landing. The mission’s main goal is to test new landing technology that would allow moon missions to land “where we want to, rather than where it is easy to land.” (With inputs from AP)