After the sun reaches its solar panels the Japanese moon landing gets back to work
Japanese space agency JAXA said that it has resumed its Space Interferometer (SLIM) mission and has resumed images of Moon’s surface after it was able to reestablish communications with it. SLIM had lost power when it was just 50 metres above the surface. “We believe that the success of pinpoint moon landing will be utilised in future lunar exploration missions,” said JAXA.
The US launches its first moon-bound lander
NASA launched the first mission to land a private space company’s robotic lander on the Moon. The mission is called ‘Artemis’ and it aims to return humans to the Moon’s surface within the next few years. The mission is the first through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme, in which the agency pays private companies to deliver scientific instruments to the Moon’s surface.
NASA collected a sample from a asteroid for the first time
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has successfully landed on asteroid Bennu after a 6.4-year journey. It landed on the asteroid, which is about 90 million km from Earth, to sample and return the asteroid’s surface pebbles. If found to be intact, that would be the biggest haul of extraterrestrial material carried back by any nation on Earth since Apollo astronauts carried pieces of the moon home.
Scientists are happy that India has landed on the Moon
ISRO Chairman K Sivan said that the Chandrayaan-3 landing gave him “confidence in setting up missions to the Moon, Mars, Venus, and even asteroids.” He added, “For example, if the spacecraft lands in a crater, on a slope, or the leg of the lander catches on a boulder, the mission could be compromised.”
India is the first nation to land a space craft near the moon’s south pole
Russia’s Luna 25 mission crashed into the Moon just before it was going to attempt to land at the southern pole, just days before several missions are headed there in the coming years. This would have been the first Russian landing on the moon in 47 years. The landing “gives confidence to configure missions to go to the Moon, Mars, Venus, maybe even asteroids”, ISRO Chairman S Madhavan Nair said.
India and Russia have crashed on the moon
India and China on Thursday successfully landed their lunar lander, Luna-25, on the Moon’s south pole. The spacecraft will help India and China to better understand permanently shadowed lunar craters that contain water deposits. India had launched its first Moon mission in 2009 but the mission ended in failure after it failed to land on the lunar surface.
India is trying to claim first successful southern pole landing in the latest moon race
ISRO on Tuesday launched the Chandrayaan-3 lunar probe to the impact crater at the Moon’s south polar region. Chandrayaan-3’s lander and rover will try to land on the Moon’s south polar region and examine the properties of regolith and pockets of water ice. A year-long mission to the impact crater was intended by the Russia’s space agency.
Russia and India are going to land on the moon
Russia’s first Moon landing attempt with its Luna-25 space probe has been aborted, the country’s space agency Roscosmos said on Tuesday. The probe was to be launched in July and land at the south pole of the Moon to probe the emergence of water on the Earth’s natural satellite through a cratering near the south pole. It’s the first Moon landing in 40 years.