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Japan makes history as spacecraft lands on the moon – The Japan Times

Japan’s lunar lander completed a successful touchdown on the moon’s surface just after midnight on Saturday, but a technical issue related to the craft’s ability to use solar power has made it uncertain whether the mission will achieve all of its goals.

With the landing, Japan becomes just the fifth country to land a craft on the moon, after the U.S., Russia, China and India.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency officials said they have good reason to believe that the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon spacecraft made a soft landing and achieved its goal of a high-precision landing, though they said they will need more time to confirm whether the lander achieved the goal of landing within 100 meters of its target site.

“We think we have succeeded in executing a soft landing,” JAXA President Hiroshi Yamanaka told a news conference at the agency’s Sagamihara campus held in the wee hours of the morning. “The data are continually sent to the Earth now after landing, which is evidence that our goal of a soft landing has been achieved.”

An image of Japan’s lunar lander SLIM | JAXA / VIA KYODO

JAXA officials, however, said that the solar panels on the lander were not generating power and the lander was being powered by its onboard battery, which would have only lasted for several hours.

They added that the lack of electricity from solar panels may limit the duration of the lander’s activities, but said they would do their best to accomplish as much as they can with the power they have. The end of battery power does not mean the end of the mission, the officials stressed.

Officials do not believe the solar panels were damaged during the landing given the rest of the spacecraft is intact, and noted that as the angle of the sun changes in the weeks ahead, the panels may start generating electricity.

Had the solar panels been working properly, the lander would have been able to operate for “several days,” before the panels suffered damage from the moon’s daytime temperatures, which can rise to about 100 degrees Celsius, the officials said.

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