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After reaching lunar orbit on Christmas Day, Japan's Lunar Exploration Intelligent Lander (SLIM) has sent back its first images of the lunar surface.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has revealed monochrome but highly detailed images of the moon's cratered surface. X feedformerly Twitter.
The images were taken after the spacecraft was successfully inserted into lunar orbit at 2:51 a.m. EDT (0951 GMT or 4:51 p.m. JST) on Monday (December 25).
Related: Japanese SLIM “Moon Sniper” lander reaches lunar orbit on Christmas
“SLIM successfully completed main engine injection at 16:51 and successfully entered lunar orbit! Below is an image sent from SLIM near the Moon,” JAXA officials wrote.
SLIM 16 years 51 years #SLIM #JAXA # pic.twitter .com/TeuB8OD3LFDecember 25, 2023
SLIM was launched on September 6, along with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM). While XRISM remained in orbit around Earth, conducting its mission to explore cosmic X-ray sources, SLIM left our planet in an elliptical orbit, orbiting the Moon approximately once every 6.4 hours.
This orbit brings the lander about 373 miles (600 km) close to the lunar surface, with the spacecraft swinging up to 2,485 miles (4,000 km) from the moon.
The 8.8-foot (2.7-meter) spacecraft is scheduled to land on the moon's surface on January 24. If the SLIM landing on the moon is successful, it will make Japan the fifth largest country after the Soviet Union, the United States, China and India. To land on the moon successfully.
After successfully landing on the Moon, SLIM will verify the technology needed to land on the Moon as well as the solar system's planets, as well as conduct up-close-and-personal investigations of the lunar surface using a small-sized probe, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
“By creating the SLIM lander, humans will make a paradigm shift toward being able to land where we want, not just where it is easy to land, as was the case before,” the space agency wrote in the mission description. “By achieving this, it will be possible to land on planets that are more resource-scarce than the Moon.”
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