By 
August 27th, 2024
Image credit: JAXA/ISAS
The team for Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) has issued a notice of the end of spacecraft operations
The SLIM project attempted to communicate again with the long-lived Moon lander on August 22nd and 23rd, but received no response from the probe.
“As a result, it was determined that there was no prospect of communication being restored in the future, and so at around 10:40 pm on the 23rd, the project sent a command to halt SLIM’s activities, shutting down the signal.”
SLIM was an undertaking by specialists at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)/Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS).
Image taken shortly after landing, the Ultra-small SORA-QI photo of SLIM in nose-down mode. Image credit: JAXA/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Pinpoint landing technology
SLIM was launched last year on September 7, departing Earth atop an H-IIA launch vehicle from the Yoshinobu Launch Complex at JAXA’s Tanegashima Space Center.
SLIM made its lunar landing on January 19, 2024 making Japan the fifth country to soft-land a spacecraft on the Moon.
Surprisingly, the craft repeatedly regained electronic consciousness, surviving stints of super-cold and lengthy lunar nights.
All technical data on the navigation guidance leading to the landing, and navigation camera image data captured during the descent and on the lunar surface, necessary for future pinpoint landing technology, was obtained by the spacecraft mission.
SLIM’s multi-band spectroscopic camera took this lunar landscape image created by synthesizing 257 low-resolution monochrome pictures. Based on this landscape image, the team is sorting out rocks of interest, assigning a nickname to each of them, with intent of communicating their relative sizes smoothly by the names.
Image credit: JAXA/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Engine anomaly
During its lunar landing, the SLIM onboard software autonomously identified an engine anomaly. While controlling the horizontal position as much as possible, SLIM continued the descent with the other engine and moved gradually towards the east.
Subsequently, SLIM landed “upside down.”
SLIM shot after 2nd awakening.
Image credit: JAXA/SLIM
SLIM had reached the Moon’s surface approximately 180 feet (55 meters) east of the original target landing site.
A Lunar Excursion Vehicle (LEV-1), a small robot deployed from SLIM, did carry out activities on the lunar surface. Telemetry data was sent directly to Earth from the small robot.
Image credit: SLIM team/JAXA/ISAS
The LEV-1 executed planned leaping movements and direct communication with ground stations, including inter-robot test radio wave data transmission from the Transformable Lunar Robot (LEV-2, nicknamed “SORA-Q”).
Go to this informative video in Japanese showcasing the Transformable Lunar Robot at:
Posted in Space News
