SPOTTED! The exhibit Cité de l’espace in Toulouse of the grains from asteroid Ryugu that I delivered from #JAXA last summer! You can see one grain under the microscope, and closely examine the second inside the facility-to-facility transfer container (metal cylinder) that is also used for scientific transport.
It's gentle excitement, as the REAL excitement will be later this summer. There'll be an English summary by your favourite JAXA science communicator afterwards 🙂
The #JAXA ISAS cleanroom facilities (where no more than 1000 mots of dust per cubic foot are allowed to hang in the air) have been expanded.
Because... we're getting another asteroid!
Part of the sample from asteroid Bennu that was returned by #NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission will come to JAXA this summer as part of the agreement between the two teamed space agencies.
New Cosmos post (by me 🤸♀️ ) with a peek at the new facilities:
A talk at the "Space Development and Utilization Subcommittee" meeting reported a little news on the #JAXA SLIM rovers, LEV-1 & LEV-2.
LEV-1 (bigger, ☂️-shaped 🤖 that can talk to Earth) sent radiowaves home for 107 mins, including transmitting data from LEV-2 (SORA-Q: ball transformer that needs LEV-1 to phone home).
This was the world's 1st lunar robot-to-robot communication, 1st direct communication from something so teeny tiny, and 1st amateur ratio station on the Moon (UHF transmitted 📻 ).
In a PLOT TWIST, the JAXA lunar lander, SLIM, has survived the lunar night (which is bloody cold and was expected to irrevocably freeze all circuits).
SLIM is a technology demonstration, designed to test tech for touching down with pinpoint (<100m) accurate at a target site. The mission achieved this in spades, with estimated accuracy of ~3-4m, although tipped due to the loss of one of the main engines.
SLIM carries 1 science instrument, which it's used but... I guess will now use some more!
Last year, the first flight of the H3 ended in a RUD. As a result, the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission--due to launch on the H3 in 2024--was delayed to 2026. So cross... everything... for tomorrow 🚀
OK people! An update from the #JAXA#SLIM team about the spacecraft have been posted on twitter (with the secret hope that y'all hush long enough to get some decent data analysis done 😅 ).
JAXA's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) is getting ready for landing on the lunar surface tomorrow Friday Jan 19 at 15:20 UTC.
The spacecraft, nicknamed the “Moon Sniper,” will demonstrate precision landing in a target area less than 100m in diameter, using real-time image recognition technology.
The spacecraft will land on a sloping surface near the crater Shioli.
SLIM carries a number of science instruments and will also deploy 2 rovers.
Here is my simplistic take on what likely happened.
The following panels from the webcast show the orientation of SLIM near touchdown. Each panel has two views. left view looking up the slope, right view from the side.
In Panel 1, SLIM was oriented correctly and planning for a final orientation as in panel 5.
But starting in panel 2, SLIM rotated right 90° and rotated 180° vertically.
It is now lying upside down, solar panels on the side. There is likely some damage too.
Let's keep in mind that after the legs touched the sloping lunar surface, SLIM was supposed to gently tilt/rotate towards the slope.
Perhaps, the rotation started too early and the spacecraft over-rotated. Maybe, one or more thrusters failed. The sideways rotation might have been caused by the spacecraft head jamming into the surface, thrusters still firing.
This is of course very coarse analysis based on what was displayed on the webcast. JAXA will figure it all out shortly.
Assuming that the SLIM lander is near upside down on the lunar surface, which way are the solar panels facing?
One likelihood is South, in which case, they will see very little Sun, given that the Sun stays on the North side in the sky (SLIM is at latitude 13.33 S).
Facing west would be more advantageous as the Sun would light them up later in the lunar day after Jan 24.
Scott Manley in a YouTube video says that the panels are facing west, as indicated in the diagram above.
Also, around 15:19:50, according to the data shown in the webcast, all thrusters on the SLIM lander were firing at abnormally high rates and the spacecraft was rotating along all 3 axes.
The clock on the display was frozen at 15:18:50 and then jumped to 15:19:03, indicating perhaps a loss of telemetry during that interval.
Things certainly did not look healthy around touchdown time. Although, this could be a telemetry glitch.
SLIM was indeed powered down at 17:57 UTC (which is when AMSAT-DL reported loss of signal; see post #27). Battery level was 12% at that time, 2.5 hours after touchdown.
Telemetry shows that the solar panels are facing west and there is hope that later in the lunar day, the system may revive. Many of us concluded that from the webcast images.
This photograph of the JAXA SLIM spacecraft taken by the LEV-2 rover was released today. It confirms that the lander ended up upside down on the lunar surface.
A press conference is in progress which will provide more details on the anomaly that caused this issue even though SLIM achieved its goals of landing within a very tight target area and deploying the two rovers.
The tiny crawling rover LEV-2 successfully sent this image via LEV-1.
These two b/w images of the lunar surface near the landing area were taken and sent by the JAXA SLIM lander itself in spite of its unfortunate landing orientation.
The first image was taken by the CAM-PX camera. It also shows the slope of the landing area.
The 2nd image was taken by the geological survey spectroscopic camera. The 1st image is overlaid in the inset.
Both images show small rocks on the relatively smooth terrain.
This slide from the briefing, translated using Google lens and posted on twitter, indicates that one of SLIM engine nozzles fell off during landing.
Yikes 😱
It shows an image of the falling nozzle captured by one of the cameras around 00:19:20 JST, just when it lost telemetry.
With one nozzle missing, the lander would have started rotating, while the software tried to compensate using the other thrusters.
Here is another translated slide from the JAXA SLIM briefing.
It states that the main engine was operated at higher load during 8 orbit changes and during the power descent phase, but there were no signs of abnormality in the main engine until the event occurred.
The the -X side (failed) engine had rather mild combustion conditions compared to the +X side engine.
The team believes that some external factor other than the main engine affected the the -X side main engine.
This slide shows that around 00:19:18 JST, when the JAXA SLIM lander was hovering around 50 m, one of the two main engines (the one on the -X side) experienced a failure, as shown by the green line in the graph; the total thrust fell by about 50%, the -X side engine temperature did not rise as expected.
Translated slide 17 states that the JAXA SLIM lander is believed to be oriented upside down, the main engine facing upwards and the solar panels facing west.
Which means that the solar panels should start receiving sunlight and hopefully charging the batteries starting today, as shown in the graphs below (graphs created by me).
The image of the lander with the lunar background is computer generated, not an actual photo.
SLIM did not land upside down. In spite of one failed engine, SLIM touched down upright and with nominal speed. It was the lateral leftward speed that caused it to rotate post touchdown.
The final resting place is 55m east of the target landing site.
At the 50 m hover mark, the positional accuracy was within 10m!
SLIM sent back data and images until it was shut down after 2.5 hours.
Here is some info on the orientation of the JAXA SLIM lander's solar panels.
The solar panels are facing southwest. NW would have been better, since SLIM is at 13.3°S. In the image taken by LEV-2, the solar panels are not visible.
So, there is some hope of a revival as the Sun moves farther west.
This is based on matching an image from a similar location (but from a much higher angle) using the lunar map at LROC. The shadows imply it too.
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) today published this image and location of the JAXA SLIM lander on the lunar surface. The image was taken on Jan 24, five days after landing.
The 1st image below shows the new LRO image. SLIM is a tiny dot in this image. The 3 other images below it zoom out of the area to provide more context. I extracted them from the LROC map site and a NASA site.