An important signal reached the Earth from the Moon – the Japanese probe that survived the extreme moment sent a picture that proves it

On January 19, the Japanese probe landed on the surface of the Moon with great accuracy, but “slightly crooked”, ie upside down. This significantly hampered the work of the rest of the mission, although the essential task of landing at the planned location was accomplished beyond expectations.

However, due to the position of the probe, it was believed that the equipment would not survive the freezing lunar night. As it turned out later, the technique was more durable than expected – as the Moon revolved around the Earth, the Sun began to shine on the tilted probe’s solar cells and the equipment was supplied with the necessary energy.

So, at the end of February, the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) reported that SLIM managed to survive the first lunar night. Now it turns out that the module survived the second night.

“(…) A message from SLIM has reached us, confirming that the spacecraft has passed the lunar night for the second time! As the Sun was still high and the equipment was powered, we took some pictures of the normal landscape with the navigation camera,” JAXA said on social media platform X last week.

According to the report, the equipment that survived the first lunar night continued to function after the second lunar night. However, some temperature sensors and unused battery cells are already experiencing failures in the systems.

SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) is the so-called “Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon”. The purpose of the mission is to demonstrate that it is possible to land on the Moon with high precision.

During the mission, it was aimed to implement a successful controlled landing with a permissible error of 100 meters from the exact planned landing place. During the mission, the module landed just 55 meters from the intended landing point.

Recently, there has been no shortage of attempts to land on the moon.

The lunar lander built by the US spaceflight company Intuitive Machines became the first private company’s spacecraft to land on the moon at the end of February.

The Nova-C Odysseus lander, designed and manufactured by Intuitive Machines, landed in the South Pole region of the Moon.

It was also the first US spacecraft to land on the moon since Apollo 17, the last mission of the Apollo program more than 50 years ago. It is true that the landing module landed roughly and is leaning on one side of the rock.