Target
NASA’s lunar exploration orbiter has shot lasers at Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) in an attempt to hit a retroreflector mounted directly beneath the lander’s solar panels.
This small, dome-shaped device, called a Laser Retroreflector Array, is a surprisingly simple device with an important job. It is designed to reflect light and reveal its location to the original laser source with an extremely high degree of accuracy.
NASA hopes the device can guide future Artemis astronauts in the dark or help locate existing spacecraft on the lunar surface. Best of all, the device operates without power, meaning it could last for decades, the space agency said.
After eight failed attempts, LRO’s laser finally hit its target on May 24, bouncing light off Japan’s SLIM, even though the lander failed to land and toppled over again in January.
“This was a significant achievement for NASA because the spacecraft is not in an optimal position,” NASA wrote in a press release last week (SLIM even landed “topside down, limiting LRO’s range”).
Moon Ping
Even if SLIM had landed perfectly, it would have been a tricky throw. The orbiter’s laser altimeter was originally designed to map the moon’s topography, not to shoot a tiny reflector onto the surface.
“LRO’s altimeter is not built for these types of applications, so the chances of finding a small retroreflector on the lunar surface are slim anyway,” NASA scientist Xiaoli Sun, who led the team that built the retroreflector attached to SLIM, said in a statement.
“The fact that the LRO team was able to develop a retroreflector that points sideways, rather than toward the sky, shows that these little devices are incredibly resilient,” he added.
The news comes after LRO successfully bounced a laser off India’s Vikram lander in December. Since then, the orbiter has hit the lander’s target three more times, NASA said.
More about the tests: NASA probe shoots Indian lunar lander with laser
