Japan craft made successful pin-point Moon landing

TOKYO: Japan's ‘Moon Sniper' craft made a pin-point lunar landing despite last-minute engine problems, the space agency said yesterday as it released the first images from the mission.

A photo taken by a mini-rover showed the boxy yellow lander sitting intact at a slight angle on the rocky grey surface, lunar slopes rising in the distance.

Saturday's touchdown made Japan only the fifth nation to achieve a soft lunar landing, after the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India.

The unmanned Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) – dubbed the 'Moon Sniper' for its precision technology – had the goal of touching down within 100 metres of a specific landing spot on a crater.

That is much more precise than the usual landing zone range that experts put at several kilometres.

"SLIM succeeded in a pinpoint soft landing ... the landing point is confirmed to be 55 metres away from the target point," space agency JAXA said on Thursday.

The lander suffered engine problems during its descent that may have knocked it off course, Shinichiro Sakai, SLIM's project manager, told reporters.

Before that, the craft had been on track to land even closer to its target.

Problems with the lightweight spacecraft's solar batteries also meant they were not generating power.

Nearly three hours after touchdown, JAXA decided to switch SLIM off with 12 per cent power remaining to allow for a possible resumption when the sun's angle changes.

That could be in just a week because the craft's solar cells are facing west, the agency said.

"Based on current estimates, we are preparing for the resumption of the probe's operations by Feb 1," JAXA said.

Mission control was able to download technical and image data from its descent and the lunar surface before powering down the craft.

The mission was aiming for a crater where the Moon's mantle, the usually deep inner layer beneath its crust, is believed to be exposed on the surface.

By analysing the rocks there, JAXA hopes to shed light on the mystery of the Moon's possible water resources -- key to building bases there one day as possible stopovers on the way to Mars.

Two probes detached successfully from SLIM on Saturday: one with a transmitter and another designed to trundle around the lunar surface beaming images to Earth.

This shape-shifting mini-rover, slightly bigger than a tennis ball, was co-developed by the firm behind the Transformer toys.

— AFP photos Handout photo from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and credited to JAXA, Takara Tomy, Sony Group Corporation and Doshisha University shows an image of the lunar surface taken and transmitted by LEV-2 ‘SORA-Q’ the transformable lunar surface robot ‘SORA-Q’, after landing on the Moon.

Photo shows rocks given nicknames in this mosaic of monochrome images of the lunar surface scan captured by the multi-band spectroscopic camera (MBC) mounted on the private company’s lunar module for the SLIM mission.