JAXA SLIM Spacecraft Makes Soft Moon Landing
JAXA SLIM Spacecraft Makes Soft Moon Landing
Agency Confirms Touchdown on the Lunar Surface
The JAXA SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) spacecraft made a soft landing on the Moon Friday at 10:20 am (ET) Friday morning. They become only the 5th country to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon, joining the U.S., the Soviet Union (Russia), China and India in the lunar landing club. SLIM was launched toward the Moon last September.
JAXA’s president, Hiroshi Yamakawa confirmed the touchdown, but said that the spacecraft was experiencing an issue with its solar panels, leaving SLIM reliant on its battery power.
SLIM's payloads include two rovers and multiple scientific experiments. More details will be posted as they become available.
According to JAXA, SLIM s a JAXA project aiming to contribute to future lunar and planetary exploration by achieving the following two objectives:
Objective A: Demonstration of high-precision landing technology on the Moon
Aimed landing accuracy of 100m compared to several kilometers to tens of kilometers of conventional lunar landers.
Key technology includes “Vision-based navigation” and “Navigation, guidance and control“
Objective B: Realization of a lightweight lunar and planetary probe system to allow more frequent lunar and planetary exploration missions
Small, lightweight, and high-performance chemical propulsion system
Weight reduction of core elements in most spacecrafts such as computers and power supply systems
By the agency's criteria, SLIM has already achieved its primary objective of a soft landing on the moon, and it said full success would be achieving a high-precision landing within 100m accuracy. Additional activities such as operation beyond sunset and "missions that operate on the lunar surface to obtain knowledge for lunar and planetary surface exploration in the future" are considered "Extra" degrees of success for the mission.