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The journey of the robot explorer “Moon Sniper”, which made Japan the fifth country to safely place a spacecraft on the lunar surface, did not go as expected.
Although the mission, officially known as the Intelligent Lander for Exploration of the Moon, or SLIM, reached its goal last week, an “anomaly” during descent caused the vehicle to land with its solar panels facing the wrong direction, forcing it to operate on limited power. Battery power, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
Now, with Moon Sniper’s battery shut down to maintain the spacecraft’s functionality, JAXA officials are in a wait-and-see mode, hoping that the changing angle of the sun will restore power to the vehicle and allow the mission to continue. If the vehicle is restarted, it will be able to achieve its goal of collecting unprecedented information about a region called the Sea of Nectar.
The spacecraft landed near a crater called Shioli (a Japanese female name pronounced “she-oh-lee”), located about 200 miles (322 kilometers) south of the Sea of Tranquility, the region near the lunar equator where Apollo 11 was first located. landed. landed man on the moon.
At about 268 meters in diameter, it is a small crater, but it is close to a much larger crater called Theophilus, which is more than 60 miles (97 kilometers) in diameter. This detail makes it particularly interesting for exploration.
D., a professor of planetary geology at Western University in Ontario and also part of the upcoming project. “When I was reading about this about a month ago, I was very excited to see that they chose this site,” said Gordon Osinski. The geology team of the Artemis III lunar mission.
“One of the great things about craters is that they dig deep into rocks and actually give us a window into what’s beneath the surface of a planetary body,” Osinski added. Shioli rests on ground ejected from the nearby larger crater, which likely came from a depth of 1 mile (1.6 kilometers), giving researchers a chance to study lunar rocks without any drilling, he said.
“I think they chose this crater because the mineral olivine has been found — and people’s eyes light up every time you mention olivine because we think it probably originates from the moon’s mantle, which we’ve never sampled in the field before,” Osinski said.
space separation
In November, NASA released photos of Shioli taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a spacecraft currently orbiting the moon and mapping it to aid future missions. In the black and white photo, the crater looks like a spot of light.
“The Moon doesn’t have an atmosphere like Earth, so it’s not protected and is constantly bombarded with micrometeorites and radiation that damage its surface layers,” said Sara Russell, professor of planetary sciences and senior research leader at Planetary. London Natural History Museum Materials Group.
The crater is lighter in color because radiation and micrometeorites haven’t had enough time to darken it yet: “When a crater forms, it ejects material that is buried and may be more pristine, because it hasn’t undergone this damage. This is what we call space erosion. This gives us the opportunity to look at this and, potentially, the Moon.” “It provides fresh rocks for us to learn more about.”
Russell added that the opportunities to study these rare rock samples make the Moon an excellent geology laboratory.
“Whatever the Moon experienced, the Earth also experienced it. “Looking at craters can also tell us something about the history of the Earth itself, because rocks form there without any of the complicating factors like water, life and wind that we have on Earth,” he said. “It’s a nice experiment in the sky.”
After landing in the crater, the spacecraft captured 257 low-resolution images of the environment, and the mission team later nicknamed some of the rocks in the photographs. If the lander manages to regain power, more photos will be taken.
pinpoint accuracy
Another reason for choosing the vicinity of Shioli as the landing site for Japan’s SLIM mission was that its small size made it an ideal training ground for the lander’s pinpoint accuracy, allowing it to target an area of just 100 meters for landing. . Living up to its nickname, Moon Sniper actually landed just 180 feet (55 meters) short of its target, which JAXA considered a “significant success.”
Geochemistry and research assistant Dr. “They’re actually using the technology to show that they can land in very small landing circles, which would be quite a step forward in terms of their ability to land on different planets,” said John Pernet-Fisher. cosmochemistry at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, in an interview before landing.
Traditionally, lunar missions target areas several kilometers wide for landing: “But that really limits where you can land, because you have to make sure that every point within the entire landing area is safe to land,” he added. “It makes things a lot more difficult if you want to land in more challenging or rugged terrain, so this could really open the door to being able to land in slightly more diverse areas topographically and therefore tell us something different about the terrain. The Moon and its formation.”
Moon Sniper’s landing site is not far from where Apollo 16 touched down in 1972. According to the Lunar and Planetary Institute, the crew of that former mission collected 731 individual rock and soil samples with a total mass of 95.7 kilograms (210 pounds). That’s a pretty big chunk of the 382 kilograms (842 pounds) NASA brought back from the moon over the course of the entire program.
“If you think about it, we’re trying to interpret the geological history of this entire body based on a collection of rocks in a relatively small area geographically,” Pernet-Fisher said. “And so it’s really important for us to collect as much data as possible from a wide variety of different geographic locations. Even though this is relatively close to some of the Apollo missions, it’s really important data that we’re going to collect.”
A sea of lava
The largest lunar feature around Shioli is the Nectar Sea, a 210-mile (339-kilometer) diameter basin that is one of the oldest on the near side of the moon, the hemisphere always facing Earth. The lunar plain can be seen with binoculars or a small telescope and was formed when the surface of the moon was created approximately 3.9 billion years ago.
The Sea of Nectar is much smaller than its neighbor, the Sea of Tranquility, which is more than 540 miles (875 kilometers) wide and is similarly smooth and flat.
“Peace was chosen for the Apollo 11 landing not for any scientific reason, but because it was one of the flattest, softest parts of the moon and therefore thought to be the safest for landing,” said Western University’s Osinski.
“This is also true for most robotic tasks,” he added. “I am the principal investigator for Canada’s first lunar rover and we are currently looking at landing sites. “We’re drifting towards flat areas, away from craters or rocks, which might actually be less interesting from a scientific perspective.”
The reason scientists call these basins “sea” or “maria” in the original Latin is because ancient astronomers who first looked at the moon believed that these basins were filled with water due to its dark hue.
“We brought back the samples after the Apollo missions and learned that they were actually giant lava planes,” Osinski said. “It wasn’t like a huge volcano with lava pouring out, but rather fissure eruptions, so lava was literally coming out of fissures. “We can think of these as lava seas.”
Water comes into play when looking at another region of the moon that will be targeted by upcoming landings, including NASA’s first crewed Artemis mission, expected in 2026: “The south polar region,” Osinski said, “is geologically interesting and also contains what we call volatile materials.” “It is also rich in nutrients, such as frozen carbon dioxide or ammonia, as well as water ice.”
According to Osinski, if humans can find a good, sizeable source of water ice in the moon’s south pole region and it becomes possible to extract it, the result could be a game changer for lunar exploration.
“We would have water for the astronauts to drink, we would be able to extract the oxygen and it could be broken down to make hydrogen for rocket fuel. “It also reduces costs because water is one of the most expensive things to launch from Earth because it is so heavy,” he said.
“If we want to build bases on the Moon, as we all hope to do, we will need to find a source of water to use on the Moon.”
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