Japan’s Moon Lander Survives 2-Week Lunar Night, “Comes Back to Life”

Japan’s Moon lander surprised scientists by surviving a two-week-long lunar night. It came back to life after the two-week lunar night, claimed Japan’s space agency on Monday.

The unmanned Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) touched down on January 20, 2024 at a lopsided angle because of which its solar panels faced the wrong way.

With the change in the sun’s angle, it started working for two days and carried out scientific observations of a crater with a high-spec camera, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said.

As it was not designed for the harsh lunar nights, it went to sleep when darkness returned. JAXA was uncertain whether it would reawaken.

“Yesterday we sent a command, to which SLIM responded,” JAXA said on X, on Monday.

“SLIM succeeded in surviving a night on the Moon’s surface while maintaining its communication function!”

It said that communications were “terminated after a short time, as it was still lunar midday and the temperature of the communication equipment was very high.”

But it added: “Preparations are being made to resume operations when instrument temperatures have sufficiently cooled.”

With this lander Japan became the fifth nation to achieve a “soft landing” on the Moon, after the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India.

The first American spaceship to the Moon since the Apollo era — the Odysseus lander built by a private company and funded by NASA — landed near the lunar South Pole on Thursday. But it is probably lying sideways.