Japanese land on the moon while the US Peregrine lander fails

The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM), a Japanese spacecraft, achieved a soft landing on the moon on Saturday. The space agency JAXA said it established communication with SLIM, which is also known as the Moon Sniper for its accuracy. However, the spacecraft has a limited power supply due to a malfunction of its solar cells.

SLIM is one of the few spacecrafts that have performed a soft landing on the moon. It descended for 20 minutes before touching down on the lunar surface.  

However, the spacecraft's power is running low because its solar battery is not working properly, according to JAXA official Hitoshi Kuninaka. He said that SLIM would only have power for several hours, unless the sun's angle changed and recharged the batteries. JAXA scientists are trying to obtain as much data as possible while the power lasts.

SLIM is part of a wave of recent lunar missions that have been launched by countries and private firms, 50 years after the first human moon landing. Only four other nations have reached the moon before: The United States, the Soviet Union, China and India.

Meanwhile, The Peregrine lander, a U.S. public/private funded spacecraft, has failed to land on the moon and reentered the Earth's atmosphere on Thursday. The Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic Technology, which developed the lander under a NASA contract, said it got the confirmation of Peregrine’s re-entry in the South Pacific.

The Peregrine lander was on a 10-day journey to the moon, where it was supposed to deliver payloads from several countries and private firms. 

NASA chief Bill Nelson congratulated Japan on Twitter for being the fifth country to land successfully on the moon.

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