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Information from The Japan Times, Mashable, Nature and Reuters
News
Japan successfully landed the Moon Sniper spacecraft on the lunar surface, but the spacecraft's solar panels were unable to generate electricity.
Scientists from the Japanese space agency JAXA were initially stunned after landing, awaiting contact with the spacecraft. JAXA's director later announced that the probe had successfully landed and sent data back to Earth. Without working solar panels, the probe's batteries will only last a few hours, but scientists hope the panels will be able to generate electricity in the coming weeks as the sun's position changes.
Japan is only the fifth country to land on the Moon. The SLIM (Smart Lander for Lunar Exploration) approach is not Japan's first attempt. In November 2022, a lander named OMOTENASHI, part of NASA's Artemis I mission, attempted to land but failed to reach its destination.
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Once the spacecraft reaches the small landing pad, “there is no point of return.”
SLIM attempted a precision landing, meaning it had to land less than 100 meters (328 feet) away. According to the Japan Times, most lunar landing attempts are made within a radius of a few kilometers. Once the spacecraft begins its descent, "there will be no turning back," Masaki Fujimoto, deputy director general of the JAXA Institute of Astronautics and Space, told the newspaper before landing. “We just have to look at the process and trust that we have done all the preparatory work correctly. You can consider it a risk, but that's what happens when you land on a celestial body as big as the Moon." JAXA officials said the probe landed with high precision, the Japan Times reported, but they were unsure if they reached their objective: a small safe landing.
The moon landing was difficult for six decades
Landing a Japanese spacecraft on the Moon in just 20 minutes was no easy task; 60 years after the first unmanned moon landing, landing below the lunar surface is no easy task. "This is not a trivial task because we got there 50 years ago," Kassaba Palotai, director of Florida Tech's space science program, told Mashable in August. Since there is no atmosphere to generate drag, landing a spacecraft involves more than just gliding across the lunar surface. “Nothing stops you except the engine,” Palotai said.
Private companies are racing to the moon, but scientists are worried
Japanese private space company iSpace attempted to land a spacecraft on the Moon last April, but the attempt failed when the lander accelerated and crashed into the lunar surface. No private company has yet managed to land a spacecraft on the Moon, but if it does, it will usher in a new era of space exploration, analysts say. "The future is already here," Mexican astrophysicist Medina Tanco told Nature. "You can consider the moon as a new economy."
NASA's commercial lunar program, which aims to buy cheap and fast trips to the lunar surface from private space companies, could "open the door" to moon landings for countries like Mexico, Nature reports. But the former NASA scientist was worried. “Can these things land and work?” "Science hasn't proven it yet."
NASA presents a clip from the movie "The Martian" (2015). Watney is alive.
