Japan’s precision lunar lander has reached its target, but it appears to be upside down

Japan’s space agency said Thursday its first lunar mission had touched the small part of the lunar surface it was aiming for, in a successful demonstration of its precise landing system, although the probe appears to be at towards.

Japan became the fifth country in history to reach the Moon when the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, landed on the Moon early Saturday. But problems with the probe’s solar batteries made it difficult at first to know whether the probe had landed in the target area.

While most previous probes used landing zones about 10 kilometers (six miles) wide, SLIM aimed for a target just 100 meters (330 feet) away. Improved precision would allow scientists to access more of the Moon, since probes could be placed closer to obstacles.

One of the lander’s main engines lost thrust about 50 meters above the moon’s surface, causing a more difficult landing than expected.

A pair of autonomous probes launched by SLIM before Touchtown returned images of the box-shaped vehicle to the surface, even though it appeared to be upside down.

After a few days of data analysis, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, determined that the spacecraft had landed about 55 meters (60 yards) from its target, between two craters near Shioli Crater, a region covered with volcanic rock.

But after the landing accident, the craft’s solar panels ended up facing the wrong direction and it can no longer produce electricity. Officials said there was still hope the probe could recharge when the moon enters daylight in the coming days.

JAXA project manager Shinichiro Sakai said the images returned were exactly like those he had imagined and seen in the computer renderings.

“Something we designed traveled to the moon and took this photo. I almost fell when I saw it,” he said. For the precise landing, Sakai said, he would give SLIM a “perfect score.”

“We have demonstrated that we can land wherever we want,” Sakai said. “We have opened the door to a new era.”

LEV-1, a jumping robot equipped with an antenna and a camera, was responsible for recording SLIM’s landing and transmitting the images to Earth. LEV-2 is a baseball-sized rover equipped with two cameras, developed by JAXA in collaboration with Sony, toymaker Tomy Co. and Doshisha University.

The two autonomous probes frame and select images independently, both using the LEV-1’s antenna to send them back to base.

Daichi Hirano, a JAXA scientist who designed LEV-2, also known as Sora-Q, said he selected images containing SLIM and the nearby lunar surface and transmitted the images via LEV-1, making the pair the first in the world to carry out this mission. Despite the rush, the probes captured and transmitted 275 images.

Japan followed the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India in reaching the surface of the Moon.

The project is the culmination of two decades of JAXA work on precision technology.

JAXA has a history of difficult landings. Its Hayabusa2 spacecraft, launched in 2014, twice landed on the 900-meter (3,000-foot-long) asteroid Ryugu, collecting samples that were returned to Earth.

SLIM, nicknamed “the Moon Sniper”, was intended to search for clues to the origin of the moon, including analyzing minerals with a special camera.

SLIM was launched on a Mitsubishi Heavy H2A rocket in September. It first orbited Earth and entered lunar orbit on December 25.

Japan hopes to regain confidence in its space technology after several failures. A spacecraft designed by a Japanese company crashed during an attempted moon landing in April, and a new flagship rocket failed on its first launch in March.

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