As always, small stories that caught my eye
JAXA's SLIM Lander Continues to Surprise
It was a surprise when JAXA's SLIM lunar lander (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) survived its first lunar night, considering it was never designed to survive the extreme cold of the two week lunar night. Temperatures can reach minus 274 F (minus 170C).
It was also surprise when it survived its second night in mid-March, and
probably a bigger surprise.
SLIM has done it again, surviving its third night and responding the night of April 23 in Japan.
On its X feed, JAXA shared an image captured by SLIM as it was coming out of its third lunar night spent on the moon.
In the translated tweet, the Japanese space agency wrote: "Last night (the night of April 23rd), we were able to successfully communicate with #SLIM, which had started up again, and confirmed that SLIM had survived for the third time."Here is a photo of the surface of the moon taken last night with the navigation camera. As this photo was taken at the earliest age of the moon so far after the overnight awakening, the moon is bright overall and the shadows are very short."
Interestingly, India's Chandrayaan 2 was used to photograph SLIM on the moon.
While SLIM was sending back images of the lunar surface, independent researcher in India Chandra Tungathurthi was using the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter to check up on the Japanese lunar lander. He shared some of the images he captured on his X feed.
Tungathurthi wrote: "I found SLIM using the Orbital high-resolution camera onboard Chandrayaan-2. The below picture was captured on 2024.03.16 at a pixel resolution of 16cm per pixel! Because of the low elevation of the sun, you see long-drawn shadows."
NASA Confirms Dragonfly Mission to Saturn's Moon Titan
Remember the discussion about Mars Sample Return mission essentially being on hold due to skyrocketing costs and schedule delays?
Last October, I ran a story about a very different mission to Titan, with a vehicle
inspired by the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars, but massively different. "Massively"
in a couple of meanings of the word. First, instead of a small helicopter, they're talking
about a nuclear-powered, car-sized, eight propeller drone. Much, much larger and
much heavier as well.
(Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)
NASA announced April 16 that the Dragonfly mission had passed its confirmation review. Passing the review allows Dragonfly to move into full-scale development.
The confirmation review sets a formal commitment by NASA to the cost and schedule for a mission. NASA said that it confirmed a July 2028 launch for Dragonfly and a total mission cost of $3.35 billion.
If Dragonfly launches in 2028, it should arrive at Titan in 2034. NASA is saying they'll choose the Heavy Lift vehicle to allow that six year travel time. Being a one-way trip, it makes sense the overall mission cost should be a bit lower, but that Dragonfly copter will be an obvious place where costs could grow.
As a reminder, the Mars Sample Return mission's cost was estimated at $8 to
$11 billion, with the samples being returned to Earth in the late 2030s to 2040. Given the life of other projects, Dragonfly should still be returning data in the 2040s but the first returns will come well before that.