The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced on Monday that it has completed operations of its lunar probe, a year after its launch.
The probe, called the Smart Lander for Lunar Exploration (SLIM), touched down on the moon in January, making Japan the fifth country to successfully land there after the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India.
After unsuccessfully trying to contact the probe last week, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency announced in a message on the X platform that it had not received any response from the small spacecraft that launched in September 2023.
“We considered it highly unlikely that we would be able to re-establish contact with the probe, and on August 23, at around 22:40, we sent a command to stop the activity of the spacecraft,” the agency explained.
The Japanese probe continued to “transmit information about its condition and environment for much longer than expected,” according to JAXA, which confirmed that “at the time of launch, no one imagined that the process would last this long.”
The mission, which was not designed to withstand the freezing lunar nights for two weeks, was to analyze rocks that were thought to come from the moon’s interior, the lunar mantle, an area that is still poorly understood.
The Japanese mission also aims to advance research into water resources on the moon, a crucial issue as the United States and China eventually intend to establish manned bases there.
Japan’s first two attempts to land on the moon failed. In 2022, Japan’s Omotenashi probe, which was sent as part of the US Artemis 1 mission, suffered a major battery failure shortly after it was launched into space.
Last year, a lander from Japanese private startup iSpace crashed on the moon after failing the crucial step of softly touching down on the surface.
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