The Japanese SLIM probe woke up again after surviving the frigid temperatures of its second lunar night, which lasts two Earth weeks, and transmitted new images, the Japanese space agency (Jaxa) announced this Thursday, March 28.
“Nous avons reçu une réponse de SLIM la nuit dernière et confirmedé (qu’elle) avait passé avec succès sa deuxième nuit” lunaire, a déclaré la Jaxa sur le compte end of January.
“As the sun was still high in the sky last night and the equipment was hot, the navigation camera rushed to take the usual landscape photos for a short period of time,” Jaxa added.
The agency also published a black and white photograph of the rocky surface of a lunar crater taken by its probe.
A third awakening
According to the agency, the data collected also shows that some of SLIM’s temperature sensors and battery cells are starting to fail, but core functions appear to be maintained.
This is the third awakening in total for SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon), which performed a very high-precision moon landing on January 20, making Japan the fifth country to successfully land on Earth’s natural satellite after United States, USSR, China and India.
However, due to an engine problem in the last tens of meters of its descent, SLIM landed at an angle, depriving its west-facing photovoltaic cells of sunlight.
After an initial period of inactivity of about ten days and a first awakening, the probe was put into hibernation and survived its first lunar night, before falling asleep again in early March.
SLIM landed in a small crater less than 300 meters in diameter, called Shioli. Before being turned off, the machine was able to land its two minirovers normally, intended to carry out analyzes of rocks from the internal structure of the Moon (the lunar mantle), which is still not very well known.
Source: BFM TV
