On January 20th, 2024, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) made history when its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) made a soft landing on the Moon, becoming the first Japanese robotic mission to do so. This small-scale lander was designed to investigate the origins of the Moon and test technologies that are fundamental to exploring the low-gravity lunar environment. Unfortunately, mission controllers lost contact with the lander after April 28th, 2024, and have spent the last few months trying to reestablish communications.
Previous attempts occurred during the lander’s operational periods between May and July but were unsuccessful. On August 23rd, JAXA announced that it had concluded operations with the SLIM mission. As the mission team reported on the SLIM mission’s Operation Status page after the final communication attempt was made:
“Fifth communication attempt after overnight (Day-6 operation). As with last month, we continued to try to receive a signal from SLIM, but unfortunately we were unable to confirm any radio waves. We considered the possibility that the onboard program had been improperly rewritten due to the effects of a solar flare, and attempted to resume communication by sending a regular program in the direction of SLIM, but we were unable to receive any radio waves from SLIM. Thank you for your support so far.”
During its time on the lunar surface, SLIM accomplished many scientific objectives and exceeded expectations in many ways. The soft landing was a high-precision maneuver with a position error of just 10 meters (~33 ft) from the landing site, constituting the world’s first successful pinpoint landing. In addition, the lander’s Multi-Band Camera (MBC) successfully performed spectral observations on ten different lunar rock samples in ten wavelength bands. Last, but not least, the mission remained operational for three lunar nights, which was not part of the original mission parameters.
JAXA also indicated that a detailed summary of SLIM’s achievements will be compiled and released shortly. “We extend our deepest gratitude to all parties involved in the development and operation of SLIM for their cooperation and support, as well as all those who encouraged the mission,” they said.
Further Reading: JAXA