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Japan's "moon sniper" SLIM mission landed successfully on the Moon making the country only the fifth to do so. But now, the lander's solar cells do not seem to be working, putting the mission in jeopardy.
Apan has become the fifth country this century, and the fifth ever, to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon. However, the nation's lunar mission, dubbed 'Moon Sniper,
Japan’s space agency is landing its first lunar probe this week. This makes the Moon an increasingly busy target for spacefaring nations – with conflicting political stances among them.
On board Japan's "Moon Sniper" spacecraft is a little robot with a big mission: to pop open like a Transformer toy, wiggle across the lunar surface and beam images back to Earth.But the gadget's chance to boldly go depends on the success of the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) mission, with a spacecraft dubbed the "Moon Sniper" by space agency JAXA for its precision landing capabilities.
‘Slim’ lander looked to have made it to the ground – but Japanese space agency could not say whether it had done so softly