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Japan's Moon lander survives another lunar night, waking up to take photos
Image source, Jaxa
A sleepy Moon lander has impressed scientists by waking up after a long night to take brand new pictures of the lunar surface.
The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (Slim) was launched by the Japanese space agency Jaxa last year, but things got off to a rocky start when it touched down on the Moon in January.
After landing sideways, meaning it couldn't use its solar panels correctly, Slim powered down and wasn't expected to survive the harsh lunar nights.
But it seems like Slim is full of surprises, with this being the third time that it's woken up to send images back to Earth.
Image source, X/@SLIM_JAXA
The team at Jaxa were amazed by the Moon lander, saying on X (formerly Twitter) that "Slim has maintained main functionality even after 3 nights on the Moon, which was not anticipated in the design!"
A lunar night is when the surface of the Moon is not exposed to the sun, and lasts 14 Earth days at a time.
As well as being much longer than a night on Earth, a lunar night is much colder, with temperatures dropping as low as minus 130C!
Image source, Jaxa
Jaxa are going to keep monitoring Slim to learn more about how it survived these conditions three times in a row, as well as trying to predict any faults that could cause the lander to stop working all-together.
Slim has now returned to sleep away the long lunar nights. On X, Jaxa said: "We plan to attempt to resume operation again in mid to late May, when SLIM's solar cells start generating electricity."
Slim's mission is to send out small probes to investigate the Moon and the inner layer of its surface, which Jaxa believe they can access at the crater where it landed.
