Japanese scientists have re-established contact with the “Moon Sniper”

The Japanese unmanned spacecraft Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) has returned to work after an unsuccessful landing on the moon on January 19. This was reported by the Japanese Space Agency.

“Last evening, communication with the SLIM module was successfully restored and work resumed!” – said a message on the X network early Monday morning.

Also published here is a photo of a moonstone next to the space module, obtained with the help of a spectroscope camera, which was turned on as soon as the device started working.

SLIM, nicknamed the “Lunar Sniper” for its precision landing technology, landed on the surface of the Moon approximately 55 meters from the target. However, after receiving the first pictures, the agency found out that the module buried its nose in the ground during landing. The device was put into sleep mode to preserve the battery charge. Japanese scientists hoped that SLIM would work again when the lighting angle changed and sunlight began to fall on the energy-generating panels.

The Lunar Sniper was launched on a Mitsubishi Heavy H2A rocket in September 2023. On December 25, he entered the lunar orbit. On January 19, the space module touched down.

Thus, Japan became only the fifth country after the USA, the USSR, China and India, which managed to gently land an apparatus on the surface of the Moon.

A soft landing on the surface of the Moon is one of the most difficult tasks in space research. Only half of all requests made over a long period of time were successful.

SLIM is a light space module the size of a passenger car. This is the result of two decades of work by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on the technology of targeted landing with a deviation from a set point of no more than 100 meters. Previously, zones about 10 kilometers wide were used for landing space modules.