Japan's Moon Explorer Resumes Mission

A Japanese lunar explorer has resumed its mission on the Moon aimed at unraveling its origins after a successful landing earlier this month, the country's space agency said, as reported by Kyodo News.

The built-in solar panels of the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, have likely started generating power after they failed to do so due to the panels not facing the Sun properly upon landing. I Photo: JAXA

The built-in solar panels of the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, have likely started generating power after they failed to do so due to the panels not facing the Sun properly upon landing, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.

The agency has been communicating with the probe since Sunday night, and the explorer's multi-band camera has resumed taking pictures of the Moon's surface, with its operations expected to continue for several days, as reported by Mainichi Shimbun.

The agency stated that the explorer is searching for a mineral called olivine originating from the Moon's mantle, a rocky inner layer that surrounds its core. The camera can scan and carry out an analysis of the olivine's composition.

Comparing the mineral with samples found on Earth and looking for similarities could provide evidence for the "giant-impact hypothesis," which suggests the Moon was formed by the Earth impacting with another planet some 4.6 billion years ago, according to JAXA.

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