Japan’s first successful Moon lander may have some life left in it. The first spacecraft, called SLIM (Smart Lander for Lunar Exploration), touched down on the surface of the moon on Friday, January 19, making Japan the fifth country to join the lunar landing club.

However, SLIM did not start working as planned. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced shortly after the historic landing that solar panels could not produce electricity on the lunar surface, and this put the future of the lander seriously in doubt.

That’s pretty much what we knew about SLIM’s status until the early hours of Monday morning (January 21st) until JAXA gave us another update. And the news was relatively encouraging: The lander has not been declared dead, and its managers are working on a possible recovery.

Team members explained Monday morning via the mission’s mission

“According to telemetry data, SLIM solar panels are pointing west. So if sunlight starts shining on the Moon’s surface from the west, there is a possibility of electricity generation and we are poised for recovery. #SLIM can only run on energy,” the team said in a separate X broadcast on Monday.

In another post on Monday, the team added that SLIM successfully transmitted back home the technical data and images collected during descent and landing on Friday..

Team members said we’ll know much more later in the week, when SLIM processors plan to provide another status update and an overview of the data analyzes performed to date.

“Although the post-landing attitude did not go as planned, we are happy that we were able to accomplish so much and are happy to have landed successfully. We are also happy to analyze the data,” the SLIM team said in another Monday morning announcement x post.

SLIM reached lunar orbit on Christmas Day and made a historic landing on Friday. JAXA has not yet announced whether the probe achieved its landing goal; We’ll probably hear more about this in the next update.

SLIM also carried two mini rovers LEV-1 (“Lunar Rover” 1) and LEV-2. Both of these small robots were deployed as planned and LEV-1 is known to be operating on the lunar surface, JAXA officials said shortly after the landing on Friday.

The other four countries that have made soft landings on the Moon are the Soviet Union and the United States; both first did so during the Cold War space race; China was the first to hit the gray soil in 2013; and India, which joined the club with the Chandrayaan-3 mission in August 2023.