Japan’s SLIM Lander Has a Landing and Roll on the Moon

by

We don’t know the final fate of the Japan SLIM lander. There seemed to be a touchdown but then communication was lost. Scott Manley believes that it may have landed and rolled. There may have been too much lateral velocity.

The lander could be partially functional even if it was on its side.

So my take is that it landed and rolled. Why?
* Landing too fast
* Landing and not shutting down engines immediately
* landing with too much lateral velocity.
Angular momentum makes things roll futher in low lunar gravity.

If the orientation can be trusted then SLIM is facing its solar panels westwards meaning they have no sunlight right now, but, they will be illuminated in a few days and some science may be possible.
We need to look to see what instruments may have been impacted by a roll like this.

The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (Slim) got its Sniper nickname because it is designed to land within 100 meters of a specific target on the surface. In comparison, the accuracy of the 1969 Apollo 11 Eaglelunar module was an elliptic which was 20 km (12 mi) long in downrange and 5 km (3.1 mi) wide in crossrange. According to Yoshifumi Inatani, deputy director general of the JAXA Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), succeeding in this extremely precise landing will lead to enhanced quality of space exploration.

SLIM was successfully launched together with the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) space telescope on 6 September 2023 at 23:42 UTC (7 September 08:42 Japan Standard Time) and is to land near Shioli crater.