Japan yesterday became the fifth nation to achieve a soft lunar landing, but said its “Moon Sniper” spacecraft was running out of power due to a solar battery problem.
After a nail-biting 20-minute descent, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) had touched down and communication had been established.
Without the solar cells functioning, Institute for Space and Astronautical Science director general Hitoshi Kuninaka said the craft — dubbed “Moon Sniper” for its precision technology — would only have power for “several hours.”
Photo: Reuters
SLIM is one of several new lunar missions launched by governments and private firms, 50 years after the first human moon landing.
Crash landings and communication failures are rife, and only four other countries have made it to the moon: the US, the Soviet Union, China and, most recently, India.
As mission control prioritized gathering data while they could, Kuninaka suggested that the batteries might work again once the angle of the sun changed.
“It’s possible that it is not facing in the originally planned direction,” he told an early-hours news conference.
“If the descent was not successful, it would have crashed at a very high speed. If that were the case, all functionality of the probe would be lost,” he said. “But data is being sent to Earth.”
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called the landing “very welcome news,” but said he was aware that more “detailed analysis” on the solar cells was needed.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated Japan in a message on X “on being the historic fifth country to land successfully on the Moon.”
JAXA said it hopes to analyze data acquired during the landing, which would help determine whether the craft landed within 100m of its intended spot.
SLIM was aiming for a crater where the moon’s mantle, the usually deep inner layer beneath its crust, is believed to be exposed on the surface.
Two probes detached successfully — one with a transmitter and another designed to trundle around the lunar surface beaming images to Earth, JAXA said.
Although the accuracy of the touchdown needs to be verified, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astronomer Jonathan McDowell said that “the mission is a big success.”
Several things could have caused the solar panel problem, he said.
“A wire came loose, a wire was connected the wrong way, or the lander is upside down and can’t see the sun for some reason,” McDowell said.
The scientist added that “hopefully” JAXA had been able to download images from the landing, but an experiment to study the composition of moon rocks might be a lost cause.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
RSS