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According to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Japan’s “Moon Sniper” lander has battled for the third time, surviving a long frigid lunar night despite not being designed to withstand such harsh conditions, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
Lunar night temperatures can drop to minus 208 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 133 degrees Celsius), according to NASA. And Moon Sniper was not expected to survive even one lunar night, a period of darkness on the moon that lasted about two weeks.
The robotic vehicle, also known as SLIM, or the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, first touched down on the lunar surface on January 19. The historic feat made Japan the third country this century, and the fifth ever, to land on the moon. The spacecraft touched down near Shioli Crater, located about 200 miles (322 kilometers) south of the Sea of Tranquility, a region near the lunar equator, where Apollo 11 first landed humans on the moon.
But things did not go as planned.
During its descent, the spacecraft experienced an anomaly and landed on its nose, which meant that its solar panels were facing west instead of upright and were not receiving the necessary sunlight to generate power. The lander only had enough energy to send back a mosaic of images before it shut down. The mission team in Japan remained hopeful that the spacecraft could rekindle when sunlight reached the solar panels again.
So far, Moon Sniper, who got his nickname from the precision technology that allowed him to land about 55 meters (180 feet) from his target, has been a pleasant surprise for the team by waking up after each moonlit night, taking new photos and being sent back. before going back to sleep. The vehicle’s resilience in the face of extreme lunar conditions is unique among missions that have landed on the moon in the past year, and experts have a few ideas as to why that might be.
Ride out the moonlit night
The mission team communicated with Moon Sniper on April 23 after the lander marked out the third lunar night. The spacecraft was able to transmit more images of its landing site.
“SLIM maintained top performance even after 3 nights on the Moon, which was not expected by design!” share the team on Xformerly known as Twitter.
In addition to surviving the extreme cold of the lunar night, Moon Sniper has also battled the harsh temperatures of the lunar day, which can reach 250 degrees Fahrenheit (121 degrees Celsius), according to NASA.
The team said they are closely monitoring SLIM’s condition to determine what components of the spacecraft may deteriorate over time as it acclimates to more of the moon’s day and night environment. .
JAXA engineers were careful about how they communicate with SLIM when it first wakes up since the spacecraft is operating at such high temperatures, which could heat up and damage the cameras. As a result, the mission team usually waits about a day after SLIM wakes up before ordering it to send back images.
So far, one of the spacecraft’s SLIM navigation cameras and Star Tracker have provided images from the Moon Sniper experience on the lunar surface. The Star Tracker was not a real camera and was instead used to measure the direction of the spacecraft by tracking the alignment of the stars as the lander traveled to the moon. But the team has taken some smart steps to make the most of Moon Sniper’s spectacular landing.
“It was not originally intended to be used on the surface of the moon, but in principle it can take pictures just like a camera, which made it operate through ‘secret commands'” the agency shared on X.
The spacecraft has two navigation cameras positioned in different directions. Given the Moon Sniper landing, one of those cameras faces space, but the other has a view of the landing site from the spacecraft’s perspective.
The sun is once again located near Shioli Crater, and Moon Sniper went into hibernation again on April 29, according to the agency.
“We plan to try to operate again in mid-to-late May, when SLIM’s solar cells start generating electricity. We appreciate your continued support,” the agency shared on X as Moon Sniper went to sleep again.
Members of the mission team recently composed a song in honor of Moon Sniper’s inspiring journey that they call “Slope 15 Degrees.” The song covers every step of the surprising mission, from launch and travel to the moon to the unexpected landing and “resurrection awakening,” team members shared on X.
The song borrows its name from the steep slope that Moon Sniper planned to land on. Now, the mission team believes that the Moon Sniper slope was about 10 degrees, which is still “surprisingly steep”.
A tale of two moon landings
In February, Houston-based space exploration company Intuitive Machines landed its uncrewed IM-1 mission, also known as Odysseus, at the moon’s south pole, making it the first commercial spacecraft ever to land on the moon. the moon and the first US-made. vehicle to reach the lunar surface since Apollo 17 in 1972. But like SLIM, the “Odie” mission involved a bit of a lunar journey including relying on experimental technology to make contact and eventually land. on his side.
On February 29, after seven days of operation, Odie went to sleep because he was not meant to live through the moonlit night. The Intuitive Machines team listened out for fear that Odie would wake up in March, but the spacecraft never called home again.
“Odie was designed to support only its payloads, and none of them were capable of a lunar night, so we didn’t design more for it,” said Jack Fischer, former NASA astronaut and vice president of production and operations at Intuitive Machines. “There are measures we could have taken to make it last longer, but we were focused on providing quick, economic support to our payloads, rather than a nation-state sponsored mission.”
The fact that Odie landed near the moon’s south pole, while SLIM touched down near the equator, could affect the longevity of the lunar night, Fischer said.
“It still depends on the terrain, but the equator will generally have less problems with shadows and generate more productive solar power (due to higher incidence angles) than Odie at the South Pole,” he said.
Other factors that could increase durability include protecting a battery’s chemistry and operating through extreme temperatures and a design that can feed solar power directly into the power system, both of which could be implemented in the future.
“Survival of the night is critical to any effort to build meaningful infrastructure on the Moon, and IM is working on many options with experiments as soon as we have our IM-3 mission,” Fischer said. “Our goal is to ‘survive’ the night first when the spacecraft goes into a kind of hibernation (like SLIM did) and wakes up on the other side. Ultimately, we want to ‘thrive’ through the night, and we are doing that with our Lunar Land Vehicle program, where the vehicle can do meaningful work during the lunar night.”
Fischer tipped his cap to JAXA for the continued success of its mission.
“While I’m not an expert on their vehicle design, it’s quite an achievement for their spacecraft to survive through a moonlit night, no matter the circumstances,” Fischer said.
Race to the moon
Japan’s success with Moon Sniper is just one entry in a renewed race to land on the moon that has played out over the past few years.
India became the fourth country to land a robotic mission on the moon in August 2023 when the Chandrayaan-3 mission touched down near the moon’s south pole. The Vikram lander and the six-wheeled Prague rover it deployed studied the moon for nearly two weeks before it fell asleep through the lunar night – but efforts to reawaken them failed.
And the push for lunar exploration continues as China seeks to land a sample collection mission on the far side of the moon, or the side facing Earth, and NASA aims to establish a permanent human presence at the moon’s south pole through its ambitious Artemis program. .
The continued success of Moon Sniper comes during what Noah Petro, NASA’s project scientist for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Artemis III, calls a “great new era of lunar exploration.”
Six of the original Apollo missions brought back lunar samples from different landing sites on the moon, but they were all on the side of the moon. Exploration of new lunar regions provides new windows for understanding Earth’s satellites.
“For me, I’m very happy to see missions landing on the surface of the moon,” said Petro. “Each time we land on the surface, we learn more about this unique lunar environment we are entering. Building this database of lunar knowledge about what it means to be and work on the lunar surface helps us better prepare for the Artemis missions.”
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