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Japan ’s long - planned Smart Lander for Investigating Moon has successfully touched down on the lunar surface , making the nation the 5th in history to do so . But all is not well forSLIM , which may have a circumscribed lease on life sentence due to hassle with its solar cells .
In apress conferencefollowing the early - good morning ( local time ) landing on the moon , the director of JAXA and the mission explained that “ the soft landing place was itself successful ; SLIM has been communicating and it receive command . However , it seems the solar prison cell is not bring forth electricity at this point in time . ”
Solar cell can be finicky , as can the rest of the electrical workings in a place — let ’s be honest , the whole affair is commonly middling finical — so the squad has n’t yet been capable to name the emergence . However , as the other detector are working aright and showing healthy value , they feel confident it is limited to the solar cells themselves .
Running on bombardment is of course not a long - term resolution , and if they do not manage to get the cells online , the master lander will only have a few hours of life sentence ( and may in fact at this time already be reaching the end of that ) .
The country and agency must be congratulated on their accomplishment ; land on the moon is no well-to-do feat and indeed multiple nations and private companies have made attempt in the last few years , none of which have succeeded . Something as small as a stuck valve(as inAstrobotic ’s late missionary station ) can jump a lunar bid .
Why valves are a space vehicle engineer ’s worst nightmare
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There is some hypothesis based on telemetry that the lander may have tipped or otherwise be in some non - optimum physical configuration , but so far JAXA does not have any confirmation of this . The initial press group discussion was chiefly to annunciate the initial success of a sonant landing place and functioning lunar lander .
The squad did note , however , that the two Lunar Excursion vehicle carry by SLIM appear to have successfully deployed . These two U-boat - craft popped off the main vehicle while it hovered a few meters above the aerofoil , and will run semi - severally from it .
LEV-1 and LEV-2 ( as they are called ) ought to be able-bodied to capture images of the landing area and SLIM itself , but “ regrettably it is not something we are able to show you immediately , ” they said . take up the sub - vehicle are working , they should send along that info shortly .
This story is developing , we will update it as new information from JAXA is made available .
