Posted on 01/19/2024 8:52:00 PM PST by Red Badger
Artist's concept of the SLIM landerJAXA VIEW 1 IMAGES
Japan has become the fifth nation to successfully land on the Moon, but the Champagne corks aren't popping. At 10:20 am EST, the SLIM lander touched down, but the solar panels failed to engage, leaving the craft with only a few hours of battery power.
Coming hard on the fiery end of America's Peregrine 1 lunar landing mission, JAXA's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) mission garnered a good deal of attention. Not only was Japan making another attempt at a Moon landing, but it was attempting to do so specifically to test a new high-precision landing system that uses surface craters as navigation marks.
Normally, Moon landings require very large landing areas in the form of ellipses covering many square miles. SLIM is a stripped-down lander designed to land with an accuracy of 100 m (330 ft). For comparison, the Apollo 11 mission needed a landing ellipse 20 km (12 miles) long.
Small wonder that SLIM earned the nickname of Moon Sniper.
(Excerpt) Read more at newatlas.com ...
banzai! good for Japan; they finally made it to the moon.
hope the Japanese can ‘work a solution’ for their solar woes.
Go to the moon they said. It’ll be fun they said…..
Have any First People’s Nations of North America lodged complaints against Japan for desecrating their sacred rock satellite?
That’s not enough to locate Alice.
‘Sniper’ not ‘Sniffer’.....................
More info here:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/japanese-moon-lander-reaches-surface-but-fate-uncertain/
Oh, no! Barrel full of deadly Ah-ji-no-moto set to go off at end of meal.
“330 ft.”
That’s about the distance from my front door to the mailbox.
A good goal for reasonable social distancing.
They say the craft is functioning normally communicating and sending back data. It’s just that the telemetry tells them the batteries are not charging.
It could just be a broken wire on a sensor and the batteries are charging fine..............
Doing spacecraft stuff is really difficult. Really, really, really difficult.
It could be a simple sensor wire is broken and the batteries are charging but they won’t know for a while yet................
Wiring is always problematic.
This whole wireless thing is clearly not without wiring.
ABC —> Always Be Charging. [Words to live by...]
I would like to put a camera at my mailbox, just to keep up on events in the ‘hood.
“Have any First People’s Nations of North America lodged complaints against Japan for desecrating their sacred rock satellite?”
Yes but the Japanese can’t read smoke symbols.
Scott says it landed upside down , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muK6gFtv7_o
Not to “live”...it isn’t alive. It functions or in this case doesn’t function anymore.
“Japan lands on Moon, but lander may have only hours to live”
Damn those Duracell batteries
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