It's gentle excitement, as the REAL excitement will be later this summer. There'll be an English summary by your favourite JAXA science communicator afterwards 🙂
The #JAXA ISAS cleanroom facilities (where no more than 1000 mots of dust per cubic foot are allowed to hang in the air) have been expanded.
Because... we're getting another asteroid!
Part of the sample from asteroid Bennu that was returned by #NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission will come to JAXA this summer as part of the agreement between the two teamed space agencies.
New Cosmos post (by me 🤸♀️ ) with a peek at the new facilities:
ESA launches EarthCARE satellite to study the impact of clouds on #ClimateChange
The #EarthCARE satellite - a collaboration between #ESA and Japanese space agency #JAXA - will study how the formation of #clouds and the density of #aerosols in the #atmosphere impact the Earth's temperature.
In other great space news --- JAXA's SLIM lander survived the lunar night!!! We don't know much about the health of the spacecraft, but the communications equipment appears to be functional.
The JAXA SLIM lander, lying in its awkward stance on the lunar surface, responded last night to a command sent by JAXA. Against all hope, it appears that it survived the cold lunar night.
The batteries were expected to get charged around this time, shortly after lunar midday, since the solar panels are facing southwest instead of up.
Apparently, the temperature of the comm equipment was too high, so comms was quickly terminated. Stay tuned!
A talk at the "Space Development and Utilization Subcommittee" meeting reported a little news on the #JAXA SLIM rovers, LEV-1 & LEV-2.
LEV-1 (bigger, ☂️-shaped 🤖 that can talk to Earth) sent radiowaves home for 107 mins, including transmitting data from LEV-2 (SORA-Q: ball transformer that needs LEV-1 to phone home).
This was the world's 1st lunar robot-to-robot communication, 1st direct communication from something so teeny tiny, and 1st amateur ratio station on the Moon (UHF transmitted 📻 ).
In a PLOT TWIST, the JAXA lunar lander, SLIM, has survived the lunar night (which is bloody cold and was expected to irrevocably freeze all circuits).
SLIM is a technology demonstration, designed to test tech for touching down with pinpoint (<100m) accurate at a target site. The mission achieved this in spades, with estimated accuracy of ~3-4m, although tipped due to the loss of one of the main engines.
SLIM carries 1 science instrument, which it's used but... I guess will now use some more!
Tweet from the SLIM mission team account reading: Communication with #SLIM was terminated after a short time, as it was still lunar midday and the temperature of the communication equipment was very high. Preparations are being made to resume operations when instrument temperatures have sufficiently cooled. #GoodAfterMoon#JAXA