Out of 10 attempts in the last five years, only 4 were complete successes, none of the two Japanese attempts so far! After China and India, Japan would be the third country on the moon.
SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) was able to set off on September 7, 2023 at 1:42 a.m. Hungarian time – with a Japanese H-2A launch vehicle from the Tanegashima space center. The launch into orbit around the Moon took place on December 25, 2023, and the landing process will begin on January 19, 2024 at the earliest, with a fine orbit correction. SLIM communicates with the ground control center, however, the solar panels are not yet able to generate electricity. This means that the lander can only rely on its batteries to get the power it needs to operate and transmit data, but it can only survive for a few hours.
During their investigations so far, the experts have come to the conclusion that approx. At an altitude of 50 m, one of the two main engines may have failed. From this point, the SLIM should have reached its designated landing site with an error of 3–4 m. Even with a single working engine, a smooth landing was achieved, with a vertical speed of about 2-3 m/s. However, the price of this was that the probe also generated a velocity component of 9 m/s laterally, towards the east. The lateral movement led to the SLIM overturning upon reaching the surface, and the probe was 55 m away from the originally targeted location.
What is definitely an additional positive is that the two analysis tools that SLIM took with it, the small units called LEV-1 and LEV-2 (Lunar Excursion Vehicle 1, 2), were successfully detached during the descent, and the analysis of the LEV-1 data has already been completed. also started.
The unsuccessful soft landing attempts of the Israeli Beresheet (Beresheet, 2019), the Indian Chandrayaan-2 (2019), the Japanese Hakuto-R M1 (2023), the Russian Luna-25 (2023) and the American Peregrine, and the failures of the Japanese OMOTENASHI „semi-hard” (airbag) moon landing at the end of 2022 clearly show that landing on the moon is not routine today! Of course, it is also true that all (!) Chinese automatic landing attempts so far have been successful, the Chang’e-3, -4 and -5 (2013, 2019 and 2020), as well as the Indian Chandrajan-3 lander last year.
