The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced the termination of the SLIM unmanned landing mission, which was scheduled to land on the lunar surface in January 2024. This was announced officially website organizations.
JAXA announced that SLIM stopped communicating a week ago.
“We concluded that it was not possible to reestablish communication with SLIM and at around 22:40 (1340 GMT) on August 23, we sent a command to terminate SLIM activities,” the space agency said.
The goal of the SLIM mission was to study a portion of the lunar mantle located on the surface of the crater where the station landed.
The spacecraft had two instruments: a transmitter probe and a mini-lunar rover that transmitted images back to Earth.
The module’s landing was successful, despite it landing at an unfortunate angle, causing its solar panels to face the wrong way.
It deployed when the sun’s angle changed and conducted scientific observations of the crater for two days using a high-performance camera.
JAXA noted that SLIM was not initially designed for the two-week lunar nights when ambient temperatures drop to -133°C. However, the module survived three lunar nights while maintaining its functionality.
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