Brandy Fleming
Japan has become the fifth country to soft-land on the moon, but problems with the craft’s solar power system mean the mission may live for just a few hours.
The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (Slim) is unmanned and currently reliant on its batteries that will eventually discharge.
When they do, the craft will go silent. It won’t receive commands and it won’t be able to talk to Earth.
Slim was carrying two small rovers and telemetry indicates it managed to eject these as planned just before touchdown, though engineers are doing all they can to fix Slim.
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