An artist illustration of the Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon (Slim) (Picture: JAXA)
Japan has officially become the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the moon, but a power supply issue means the mission could be in peril.
Japanese authorities say the spacecraft, which is not carrying astronauts, successfully touched down on the lunar surface earlier today.
However, engineers at the country’s space agency, JAXA, soon discovered that the solar cells used to power the craft were not working.
The spaceship is currently being run off batteries, but these will only last for a few hours.
Hitoshi Kuninak, head of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, said the priority now was for the craft, called Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon (Slim), to gather as much moon data as possible before the batteries die.
The mission’s main goal is to test new landing technology that would, according to JAXA, allow moon missions to land ‘where we want to, rather than where it is easy to land’.
Slim was designed to achieve a pin-point landing, which means, to be successful it needed to hit a landing zone of 100 metres (330ft).
The H-IIA rocket carrying Slim and other objects lifting off from the Tanegashima Space Centre on Tanegashima Island in Japan in September (Picture: JAXA/AFP)
Previous missions have aimed for a target of 10km (six miles).
Mr Kuninaka said that while more time is needed to see if Slim made a pin-point landing, data from its movements before touchdown suggest it probably did.
Slim is also designed to find clues about the origin of the moon through techniques such as analysing minerals with a special camera.
It touched down at around 12.20am Tokyo time today, (3.20pm GMT) and although its exact location is yet to be confirmed, it was aiming to land near the Shioli crater, near a region covered in volcanic rock.
The Japanese landing came just 10 days after a US private firm’s own moon mission failed.
Slim pictured in June last year before it was launched in September(Picture: JAXA/AFP)
Astrobotic Technology’s moon lander suffered a fuel leak hours after the launch and plummeted back down to earth over the South Pacific.
Japan, meanwhile, has experienced its own space technology failures over the years.
Most recently, in April last year, a spacecraft designed by a Japanese company crashed during attempts to land on the moon, while a new flagship rocket failed its debut launch the month before.
If Slim, launched into space in September, has achieved a pin-point landing, it could raise the country’s profile in the global space technology race.
Hitoshi Kuninaka speaking at a press conference today about Slim’s landing on the moon (Picture: JAXA/AFP)
Mr Kuninuka said there is still hope that the craft can generate electricity when the solar angle changes.
‘When the light from Earth shines from a different direction it could hit the solar cell, so we are considering this and we are hoping for Slim to regain power.’
Japan follows the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India in reaching the moon.
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There’s a problem with the spacecraft’s power supply.