Japan’s Moon lander has been put back to sleep after it surprisingly survived the freezing, two-week lunar night, the country’s space agency said, with another operation attempt scheduled for later this month.
The unmanned Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) touched down in January at a wonky angle that left its solar panels facing the wrong way.
As the sun’s angle shifted, it came back to life for two days and carried out scientific observations of a crater with a high-spec camera.
This week, the SLIM probe, which was “not de-signed for the harsh lunar nights,” when the tem-perature plunges to minus 133 degrees, produced another surprise by waking up after two weeks. “SLIM has gone to sleep again as the sun set after 3 am (Japan Time) on March 1,” the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday, alongside an image of the rocky lunar surface captured by the probe.—AFP
