Successfully landedTrust: Agency-primaryLast verified
SLIM
Smart Lander for Investigating Moon ('Moon Sniper')
First Japanese soft landing; made Japan the 5th nation to soft-land on the Moon. One of two main engines failed at ~50 m altitude; lander touched down on its side but still met 100-m precision goal. Survived four lunar-night cycles despite not being designed for it; declared concluded 2024-08-23.
Mission specifications
- Operator
- JAXA
- Prime contractor
- Mitsubishi Electric
- Launch
- 2023-09-06
- Landing
- 2024-01-19
- Landing site
- Near Shioli crater, Mare Nectaris (~10 m precision vs 100 m target)
- Customer
- JAXA
- Payload
- LEV-1 (2.1 kg hopper) + LEV-2 'SORA-Q' (0.25 kg sphere)as of [1]
Key findings
- 1.Made Japan the fifth nation to soft-land on the Moon and demonstrated the mission's headline goal — 'pinpoint' landing accuracy, touching down roughly 55 m from the target versus the 100 m requirement, with post-analysis putting the precision at 3–4 m of the aim point.
- 2.During descent one of two main engines lost its nozzle at about 50 m altitude; the resulting off-nominal thrust flipped SLIM onto its nose so the solar cells faced west, away from the Sun, cutting main operations to ~157 minutes on battery power.
- 3.In its brief window SLIM deployed both mini-probes: LEV-1 hopped across the surface with wide-angle cameras and direct-to-Earth telemetry, and the LEV-2 'SORA-Q' transforming sphere imaged the tipped-over lander from the ground.
- 4.The Multi-Band Camera surveyed nearby rocks (nicknamed for dog breeds) to measure the Mg content of olivine, testing the site near Shioli crater as a possible exposure of lunar-mantle material.
- 5.Though never designed for it, SLIM revived when sunlight later reached its panels and survived multiple frigid two-week lunar nights, with check-ins in February, March and April 2024 before JAXA declared the mission concluded on 2024-08-23.
Mission outcome
SLIM (the 'Moon Sniper') proved that a lander can put itself down within meters of a chosen point rather than kilometers — the precision-landing capability future missions will need to reach specific science or resource sites. An engine nozzle failure at ~50 m left it resting on its nose with its solar array pointed the wrong way, so it ran only ~157 minutes on battery at first, yet it still met its 100 m accuracy goal, returned Multi-Band Camera data on olivine, and deployed its LEV-1 and SORA-Q probes. Its unplanned survival through several brutally cold lunar nights was a bonus that outlasted every expectation for a lander built to operate for hours, not months.