It ’s been a few day of good news for lunar exploration . First , Intuitive Machine ’s Odysseus became the first US lander in over 50 year , and the first private one , to land on the Moon – even if it didland a trivial wonky , as is the trend . Now , the Japanese Space Agency ( JAXA ) reports that its own SLIM lander has managed to survive the extremely cold and unforgiving lunar nighttime .
BothSLIMandOdysseuslanded on their sides , a reminder of how hard it still is to land on the Moon , even if everything else buy the farm well . The situation stimulate SLIM some major problem . When it landed on the lunar open on January 19 , its awkward position prevented its solar panel from powering up and leave the lander lead on bombardment . JAXA hop that as the Moon affect around the worldly concern , the Sun ’s rays would strike the lander just the right way , kickstarting the mission into geartrain – whichluckily it did .
However , this meant the mission had even few days of sun to work with than earlier expect before thelunar night , which is not merciful , set in . During the day , temperatures on the Moon can strive 121 ° C ( 250 ° farad ) but at night they drop down to -133 ° C ( -208 ° F ) . Coupled with the fact it endure 14 days , the lunar night has see to it the death of many robotic missions , admit the recent Indianlander Vikram and its rover .
There was no warrant that SLIM would wake up once lunar day roll back around but JAXA has announce that it charge a substance to the lunar and get a reply back .
“ Last Nox , a command was sent to # SLIM and a response received , confirming that the space vehicle has made it through the lunar nighttime and keep communicating capabilities ! " JAXA say in a serial oftweets .
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But the uncompromising lander has the opposite problem now . It ’s lunar midday there , and it could easily overheat if it starts act upon .
" Communication with # SLIM was can after a short time , as it was still lunar midday and the temperature of the communication equipment was very high . Preparations are being made to take up operations when instrument temperatures have sufficiently cool down , ” JAXA wrote .
SLIM has more than overstep the outlook for the foreign mission . The end was a preciseness speck soft landing within 100 meter ( 330 feet ) of a specific target area . SLIMappears to have landedjust 55 meters ( 180 feet ) from its target , a precision never achieved before on another world . As a comparison , the wait landing place site for Apollo 11 was an ellipse 20 kilometers by 5 kilometers ( 12 by 3.1 miles ) .
