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Japan’s valiant moon lander was put to sleep again after unexpectedly surviving its second ultra-chilly long lunar night, the space agency said Monday.<\/p>\n
The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM)\u2014dubbed the “Moon Sniper” for its landing precision\u2014touched down in January, making Japan only the fifth nation to achieve a soft lunar landing.<\/p>\n
But the unmanned lightweight spacecraft, carrying a mini-rover that moves like a turtle, landed at a wonky angle that left its solar panels facing the wrong way.<\/p>\n
Defying pessimistic predictions, the probe was revived in late February once the lunar night\u2014which lasts about 14 Earth days\u2014ended.<\/p>\n
Despite facing temperatures as low as -130 degrees Celsius (-200 degrees Fahrenheit), it repeated the feat last week and transmitted new images back to Earth.<\/p>\n
On Monday, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced the probe has been put back to sleep again on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“During this operation, we mainly checked the status of several devices by turning on switches and applying loads,” JAXA said on social media platform X.<\/p>\n
“Although there are some malfunctions in some functions of MBC, it still works, so we are carefully checking its status,” it said, referring to the Multi-band Camera used to examine lunar rocks.<\/p>\n
Some types of rocks around the lunar craters are thought to contain material from its mantle, which could give clues on how the moon was formed.<\/p>\n
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