Japan's SLIM spacecraft regains power over a week after moon landing

Japan's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) spacecraft has regained power, its space agency Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said on Monday, more than a week after it achieved an unconventionally precise lunar landing but ran out of electricity because its solar panels were at the wrong angle.

The JAXA re-established communication with its SLIM late on Sunday, a JAXA spokesperson said, nearly nine days after the probe's touchdown made Japan the fifth country to put a spacecraft on the moon.

After it landed on January 20, JAXA had said that problems with the craft's solar batteries meant they were not generating power.

"Last evening we succeeded in establishing communication with SLIM, and resumed operations," JAXA said on X, formerly Twitter.

"We immediately started scientific observations with Multi-Band Camera (MBC), and have successfully obtained first light for 10-band observation," it said, referring to the lander's multiband spectroscopic camera.

The probe was likely able to generate power thanks to a change in the sunlight's direction, JAXA said.

SLIM resumed its operations to analyse the composition of olivine rocks on the lunar surface with its multi-band spectral camera, in search of clues about the origin of the moon, the agency added.

SLIM touched down on the moon within 55 meters of its target in a crater near the lunar equator on January 20. JAXA said it proved an advancement in what it called vision-based "pinpoint" landing, a technology that could be a powerful tool for future exploration of hilly moon poles seen as a possible source of fuel, water and oxygen.

SLIM lost the thrust of one of its two main engines shortly before the touchdown for unknown reasons and ended up drifting a few dozen metres away from the target. The lander safely stopped on a gentle slope but appeared toppled with an engine facing upward in a picture taken by a baseball-sized wheeled rover it deployed.

The probe's solar panels faced westward due to the displacement and could not immediately generate power. JAXA manually unplugged SLIM's dying battery 2 hours and 37 minutes after the touchdown as it completed the transmission of the lander's data to Earth.

JAXA does not have a clear date when SLIM will end its operation on the moon, but the agency has previously said the lander was not designed to survive a lunar night (which lasts for 14 Earth days). The next lunar night begins on Thursday.

Two previous Japanese lunar missions, one public and one private, have failed.

In 2022, the country unsuccessfully sent a lunar probe named Omotenashi as part of the United States' Artemis 1 mission.

In April, Japanese startup ispace tried in vain to become the first private company to land on the moon, losing communication with its craft after what it described as a "hard landing."

(With input from AFP, Reuters)