Although Japan’s first lunar lander ended in failure, another EQUEELEUS satellite that also took off on the SLS rocket sent good news and successfully sent photos of the back of the moon.
The EQUEELEUS (Equilibrium Lunar-Earth point 6U) satellite was developed jointly by the University of Tokyo and JAXA and is one of 10 secondary payloads on NASA’s Artemis 1 mission, which was deployed after the Orion spacecraft separated from the SLS rocket.
Although in the same payload batch, Japan’s first lunar lander named OMOTENASHI failed the mission because it failed to make contact, but JAXA confirmed that the EQUEELEUS satellite is operating in space. On November 22, it flew past the moon and took photos of the back of the moon, which shows craters of various sizes.
The EQUEELEUS satellite will eventually travel to the L2 Lagrangian point of the Earth-Moon system, on a mission to scan the Earth’s plasma layer to figure out how to protect humans and electronic equipment from radiation damage during long-distance space travel.
▲ EQUULEUS photographed the far side of the moon.
(Image source:Equestrian/Twitter）
