The Japanese “lunar sniper” was in trouble: he found himself in an “inappropriate” position

The Japanese “lunar sniper” probe made an incredibly precise landing, but turned upside down. The probe landed meters rather than kilometers from its intended target, but a rocket malfunction left it in an inappropriate position.

A Japanese spacecraft made a historic “spot” landing on the lunar surface over the weekend, the country’s space agency said, but there’s a slight catch: Images sent back to Earth show the probe lying upside down.

Japan became only the fifth country to launch a spacecraft to the lunar surface – after the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India – when its smart lunar exploration lander (Slim) touched down early Saturday morning, The Guardian reports.

Problems with the probe’s solar panels initially made it difficult to determine whether it had landed in the intended area. But data obtained by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) shows the probe landed 55 meters from its intended site, between two craters in a region covered in volcanic rock.

Japanese officials said the landing was carried out with unprecedented precision. Most previous probes have targeted much wider landing zones, up to 10 kilometers wide – a reflection of the many challenges facing lunar landings 54 years after humans first set foot on the lunar surface.

Space agency Jaxa said the probe would likely have been within three to four meters of its intended landing site if one of its main engines had not lost thrust during the final stages of its mission, resulting in a harder landing than expected. He was aiming at a target 100 meters wide.

Still, space officials are describing the mission as a success despite the fact that the probe, nicknamed the “lunar sniper,” appears to have rolled down the side of the crater, leaving its solar panels facing the wrong way and unable to generate electricity.

Jaxa said it prioritized transmitting landing data before the Slim’s battery ran out. The agency said there is a chance the probe could recharge once the western side of the moon begins to receive sunlight in the coming days.

“We’ve proven that you can land where you want, not where you can,” Jaxa project manager Shinichiro Sakai told reporters. “We have opened the door to a new era.”

He said the images sent were exactly what he had imagined. “Something we designed went all the way to the moon and took this picture. I almost fell when I saw it,” he said, adding that Slim’s precise landing earned “top marks.”

Images from one of two autonomous probes released by Slim ahead of landing show the box-shaped main craft on the lunar surface.

One of the robots is equipped with an antenna and a camera that recorded the probe’s landing and transmitted images back to Earth. The second is a baseball-sized rover equipped with two cameras that was jointly developed by Jaxa, Japanese toy maker Tomy and Doshisha University.

By analyzing the rocks, Jaxa hopes to shed light on the mystery of the Moon’s possible water resources – key to establishing bases there as possible stopovers on the route to Mars.

The Slim probe was launched in September and initially orbited Earth before entering lunar orbit on Christmas Day.

Japan hopes the mission will reinvigorate its space program after a series of failures. A spacecraft developed by a Japanese company crashed during a lunar landing attempt in April, and the new flagship rocket failed on its debut launch in March.