Goodnight, SLIM: Probe Enters Lunar Night After Recontacting Earth

We finish our trilogy of articles (launch and landing being our previous two) with the news of SLIM having regained contact with Earth. SLIM is not expected to survive the lunar night, but attempts will be made to recontact the probe when the probe re-enters the sunlight. JAXA has also since confirmed the landing distance…

Ethan “Beagle” Burks

February 6, 2024

1–2 minutes

JAXA, Moon, Moon lander, SLIM

We finish our trilogy of articles (launch and landing being our previous two) with the news of SLIM having regained contact with Earth.

SLIM is not expected to survive the lunar night, but attempts will be made to recontact the probe when the probe re-enters the sunlight.

A photo focusing on one of SLIM’s imaging targets, a rock named “*Toy Poodle*“. Source: JAXA

JAXA has also since confirmed the landing distance from its target — 55 meters away, a bit more than it would have been had it not suffered an engine failure moments before touchdown. Officials have said that had the engine not failed, the likely range would have been somewhere between 3-10 meters.

*SLIM*‘s final image before the shutdown command went into effect for the lunar night. Source: JAXA

As mentioned before, SLIM is not expected or designed to survive the lunar night, but JAXA teams are not giving up hope.

After completing operation from 1/30 ~ 1/31, #SLIM entered a two week dormancy period during the long lunar night ?. Although SLIM was not designed for the harsh lunar nights, we plan to try to operate again from mid-February, when the Sun will shine again on SLIM’s solar cells. pic.twitter.com/JO4ZgDaOxo
— ????????SLIM (@SLIM_JAXA) February 1, 2024

The team at JAXA is going to try and communicate again with the spacecraft in a few weeks’ time, and may yet come back to life. We wish the team at JAXA a warm lunar night, and good night, Moon, good night, SLIM!