Here's today's press release for JAXA's SLIM lunar landing!
TL;DR:
Pinpoint site identification was crazily successful.
We were lowering into position, detecting boulders like a champ.
THEN ONE OF THE ENGINES DROPPED OFF.
(I kid you not)
(we don't know why yet)
(maybe space pirates)
But we still soft-landed on 1 engine.
(TAKE THAT SPACE PIRATES!)
but on our head.
Strangely, might not be a big deal once the Sun moves round to the other side of the spacecraft.
Also, I hate the formatting of the official JAXA press releases. But HQ posted it SO LATE we didn't have a chance to put a nicer formatted version on the ISAS website.
However, that will appear, along with my translated slides from the press conference today, which read like the newest action blockbuster.
Not kidding about SLIM landing on its head... here is picture! This was taken by LEV-2 (SORA-Q) that adorbs transformer robot carried by SLIM that looks like a ball and then springs open to roll wild across the lunar surface and take photos as the mood takes it.
Clearly, it found this pretty funny and it autonomously selected this shot to send back to Earth.
There's a press release here that HQ can't be bothered to post the English.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to be its side, not its head. At first I was quite puzzled about how did it land in this position, but after seeing this depiction of the landing, I noticed that the thrusters are on the side. Maybe the rover can bump the lander in the desired position.
I've already done this maneuver several times in Kerbal Space Program.
(jokes apart, I hope that some sun will hit the solar panels anyway)
@oloturia Well it depends how you define these arbitrary things! But if you compare with the SLIM mascot, it's on its head!
@elizabethtasker
With that sort of trickster mascot it seems entirely expected that SLIM would land on its head, just look at them!
I'm trying to imagine that character carefully doing any delicate tasks, but it always ends with some zany disaster ;)
@oloturia
@tobychev @elizabethtasker @oloturia
Would have earned 40 points if Japan did that with a second lunar lander