Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news about fascinating discoveries, scientific developments and more.
The journey of “Moon Sniper,” the robotic explorer who made Japan only the fifth country to safely land a spacecraft on the lunar surface, hasn’t gone quite as expected.
Although the mission – officially known as the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM – reached its destination last week, an ‘anomaly’ that occurred during the descent resulted in the vehicle landing with its solar panels pointed in the wrong direction, causing it to was forced to operate on a limited scale. battery power, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
With Moon Sniper’s battery shut down to maintain the spacecraft’s functionality, JAXA officials are in wait-and-see mode, hoping that the changing angle of the sun will restore power to the vehicle and allow the mission to resume. When the lander powers up again, it could fulfill its goals of gathering unprecedented information about a region called the Sea of Nectar.
The spacecraft landed near a crater called Shioli – a Japanese feminine given name pronounced “she-oh-lee” – which is located about 200 miles (322 kilometers) south of the Sea of Tranquility, the area near the lunar equator where Apollo 11 flew. was shot first. brought people to the moon.
With a diameter of about 268 meters, it is a small crater, but it is close to a much larger crater called Theophilus, which is more than 97 kilometers wide. This detail makes it particularly interesting for exploration.
“When I read about this about a month ago, I was super excited to see that they had chosen this location,” says Dr. Gordon Osinski, professor of planetary geology at Western University in Ontario, who is also part of the upcoming Artemis III moon mission’s geology team.
“One of the beautiful things about craters is that they dig up rocks from the depths and essentially give us a window into what lies beneath the surface of a planetary body,” Osinski added. He noted that Shioli sits on soil ejected from the larger nearby crater, which likely comes from a depth of more than 1.6 kilometers, giving researchers the chance to study moon rocks without having to drill.
“I think they chose this particular crater because the mineral olivine was found – and every time you mention olivine, people’s eyes light up because we think it probably comes from the moon’s mantle, which we’ve never seen before. previously sampled on site. Osinski said.
Weathering of space
In November, NASA published photos of Shioli taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a spacecraft currently orbiting and mapping the moon to aid future missions. In the black and white photo, the crater looks like a spot of light.
“The moon doesn’t have an atmosphere like Earth, so it is unprotected and is constantly bombarded with micrometeorites and radiation that damage its surface layers,” said Sara Russell, professor of planetary sciences and senior research leader at the Planetary Institute. Materials Group of the Natural History Museum in London.
The crater is lighter in color because radiation and micrometeorites have not yet had enough time to darken it: “When a crater forms, it throws up material that was buried and may be even more pristine because it has not experienced this damage . what we call space weathering. It gives us new insights to look at that and possibly learn more about the moon,” she said.
Opportunities to study these rare rock samples make the moon a brilliant geological laboratory, Russell added.
“Whatever the moon has experienced, the earth has also experienced. Looking at craters can also tell us something about the history of the Earth itself, because that’s where rocks form without the complicating factors we have on Earth, like water, life and wind,” she said. “It’s a beautiful experiment in the air.”
After the spacecraft landed in the crater, it took 257 low-resolution images of the surrounding area, and the mission team later gave nicknames to some of the rocks in the photos. More photos will be taken if the lander manages to regain power.
Accuracy
Another reason for choosing the Shioli area as the landing site for Japan’s SLIM mission is that its small size provided an ideal training ground for the lander’s pinpoint accuracy, allowing it to target an area just 100 meters wide for a landing . . The Moon Sniper lived up to its nickname and actually landed just 55 meters away from its target, which JAXA deemed a “major achievement.”
“They’re really using the technology to show that they can land in very small landing circles, which would be quite a step forward in terms of being able to land on different planets,” said Dr. John Pernet-Fisher, a researcher in geochemistry and cosmochemistry from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, in an interview before landing.
Traditionally, lunar missions target areas a few kilometers wide for a landing: “But that really limits where you can land, because you have to make sure that within the entire landing area, every point is safe to land on,” he added. “That makes things a lot more difficult if you want to land in more challenging or rugged terrain, so this could really open the doors to being able to land in areas that are a bit more topographically varied and therefore can tell us something different about the moon and its formation. ”
The Moon Sniper landing site is not far from where Apollo 16 landed in 1972. The crew of that older mission collected 731 individual rock and soil samples for a total mass of 95.7 kilograms (210 pounds), according to the Lunar and Planetary Institute. That’s a significant portion of the 382 kilograms (842 pounds) NASA brought back during the entire moon program.
“If you think about it, we’re trying to interpret the geologic history of this entire body based on a collection of rocks from a fairly geographically small area,” Pernet-Fisher said. “And so it’s very important for us to collect as much data as possible from a huge diversity of different geographical locations. Even though this is still relatively close to some of the Apollo missions, it is really important data that we will be collecting.”
A sea of lava
The largest lunar feature in the Shioli area is the Sea of Nectar, a basin with a diameter of 339 kilometers that is one of the oldest on the near side of the moon, the hemisphere that always faces Earth. The lunar plain is visible with binoculars or a small telescope and was formed when the moon’s surface formed about 3.9 billion years ago.
The Sea of Nectar is much smaller than its neighbor, the Sea of Tranquility, which is over 875 kilometers wide and is also smooth and flat.
“Rest was chosen for the Apollo 11 landing not for scientific reasons, but because it was one of the flattest and smoothest parts of the moon and therefore considered the safest to land on,” said Osinski of the Western University.
“That also applies to most robotic missions,” he added. “I am the principal investigator on Canada’s first-ever lunar rover and we are now exploring landing sites. We are driven into smooth areas, away from craters or boulders, which may actually sound less scientifically interesting.”
The reason scientists call these basins “seas” or “maria” in the original Latin is that ancient astronomers who first looked at the moon thought they were filled with water, due to its darker hue.
“After the Apollo missions, we brought back samples and found that they were essentially huge lava planes,” Osinski said. “It’s not like there was a huge volcano with lava pouring out, but rather fissure eruptions, so the lava was literally coming up through fractures. We can think of them as lava seas.”
Water comes into play as we look at another part of the moon that will be targeted by upcoming landings, including NASA’s first crewed Artemis mission, expected as early as 2026: “The Antarctic region,” Osinski said, “an area that geologically interesting, and also rich in what we call volatile substances – think of water ice, but also frozen carbon dioxide or ammonia.”
If humans can find a good, sizable source of water ice in the moon’s south polar region and it is possible to extract it, the result could be a game changer for lunar exploration, according to Osinski.
“We would have water for the astronauts to drink, we could take the oxygen out of it and it could be broken down to get hydrogen as rocket fuel. It also reduces costs because water is one of the most expensive things to launch from Earth because it is so heavy,” he said.
“If we want to build moon bases, which we all hope, we will have to find a water source that we can use on the moon.”
For more CNN news and newsletters, create an account at CNN.com