The Japanese space agency, JAXAreceived the past December 25th a long-awaited Christmas gift. After three months of travel, the ship of the SLIM mission He was already in the path of the Moon: his final objective. Today, finally, it has taken the next step, converting Japan in it fifth country to land on the Moon.
Before the Japanese space agency, the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India had managed to land. It is a complicated objective for which many technological advances are needed. But SLIM was equipped with everything necessary.
The descent began about 15:00 UTC (16:00, Spanish peninsular time) and ended at 15:20 UTC. During the 20 minutes that it lasted, SLIM has put all its most cutting-edge technology into operation. And the ship is equipped with an instrument that takes images in real time and compares them with a cartography of the Moon in which the exact landing place. Thus, it has been able to adjust its trajectory to touch the selenite surface in the right place. Furthermore, the moon landing was smooth enough not to break its instruments, thanks to the laser that allowed it to calculate the descent distance at all times and land at the right moment, without abruptness.
The next steps of the Japanese ship SLIM
If SLIM was so well equipped to land in the right place, it is because it has no time to lose. The temperature difference on the Moon between its day and night is immense. When lunar night falls, you can reach the -130ºC. This is too cold for SLIM instruments, which are not designed to withstand those temperatures. Therefore, you must do all your work in the two Earth weeks that a lunar day lasts.
If it had not landed in the right place, too much time would have been wasted looking for it and that was not feasible. But what comes next?
It should be noted that SLIM has far surpassed its first milestone: placing Japan on the list of countries that have managed to land on the Moon. It has also reached its second milestone: demonstrate that your exploration system works and is capable of taking spacecraft to very specific places, whether on the Moon or other objects. However, he still has a lot of work ahead of him.
The importance of the landing site
The site selected for SLIM’s landing, the Shioli crater, is made up of rocks from the lunar mantle. For this reason, the ship has instruments that can analyze sunlight reflected by the rocks and, thus, calculate its composition.
On the other hand, SLIM had two small robots on board, which were released during the moon landing. The first is LEV-1, a small rover weighing just over 2 kg, which moves using small jumps and is equipped with a thermometer and a radiation sensor. As for the second, called LEV-2, is even smaller. It barely weighs 250 grams and is spherical, about 8 centimeters in diameter. Once on the Moon, he has taken off his wheels to walk, rolling, in true BB-8 style. In its case, it is equipped with two cameras and can change its shape to move faster and run on the lunar surface. Thus, you can take photos of the entire area around the landing site in a short time. Both can send their data directly to Earth and will do so soon, as they will be operational for 40 minutes and 2 hours, respectively.
Afterwards, SLIM will be left alone in the face of danger. Well, accompanied by what is left of the rest of the missions that have managed to land in this hostile place reserved for only a few countries in the world.