(Tokyo) Japan’s space agency (JAXA) announced Monday that it has ended operations of its lunar module, which survived three freezing lunar nights, a year after its launch.
The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) landed on Earth’s satellite in January, making Japan the fifth country to successfully land on Earth’s natural satellite after the United States, the USSR, China and India.
After unsuccessfully trying to communicate with the module last week, JAXA announced on X that it had received no response from the small spacecraft, which is due to be launched in September 2023.
“We assessed that there was no prospect of being able to re-establish communication with SLIM, and on August 23 at approximately 22:40 we sent a command to stop (its) activity,” Jaxa explained.
The Japanese probe “continued to transmit information about its status and surroundings for a much longer period than expected,” JAXA said, saying: “At the time of launch, no one imagined that the operation would continue for so long.”
The mission of SLIM, which was not designed to withstand the two-week frigid lunar nights, was to conduct analyses of rocks believed to come from the Moon’s internal structure, the lunar mantle, which is still very poorly understood.
The Japanese mission also aimed to advance research into water resources on the Moon, a key issue as the United States and China eventually plan to establish manned bases there.
Japan’s first two attempts at landing on the moon went awry. In 2022, a JAXA probe, Omotenashi, aboard the American Artemis 1 mission, suffered a fatal battery failure shortly after being ejected into space.
And last year, a lunar lander from the young Japanese private company ispace crashed on the surface of the Moon, having missed the crucial step of a gentle descent.