Japan's SLIM spacecraft is seen nose down on the surface of the Moon. (credit: JAXA/Takara Tomy/Sony Group Corporation/Doshisha University )

Japan's first lunar lander made an unsteady touchdown on the Moon last week, moments after one of its two main engines inexplicably lost power and apparently fell off the spacecraft, officials said Thursday.

About the size of a small car, the Small Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) landed on Friday, making Japan the fifth country to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface. Shortly after landing, ground teams in Japan realized the spacecraft was not recharging its battery with its solar panels. The evidence at the time suggested that SLIM likely ended up in an unexpected orientation on the Moon, with its solar cells facing away from the Sun.

With the benefit of six days of data crunching and analysis, officials from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) briefed reporters Thursday on what they have learned about SLIM's landing. Indeed, the spacecraft toppled over after touching down, with its nose planted into the lunar regolith and its rear propulsion section pointed toward space.

Enlarge / A camera on Astrobotic's Peregrine spacecraft captured this view of a crescent Earth during its mission. (credit: Astrobotic )

Astrobotic knew its first space mission would be rife with risks. After all, the company's Peregrine spacecraft would attempt something never done before—landing a commercial spacecraft on the surface of the Moon.

The most hazardous part of the mission, actually landing on the Moon, would happen more than a month after Peregrine's launch. But the robotic spacecraft never made it that far. During Peregrine's startup sequence after separation from its United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket , one of the spacecraft's propellant tanks ruptured, spewing precious nitrogen tetroxide into space. The incident left Peregrine unable to land on the Moon, and it threatened to kill the spacecraft within hours of liftoff.

" What a wild adventure we were just on, not the outcome we were hoping for," said John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic.

Enlarge / Artist's illustration of the SLIM spacecraft on final descent to the Moon. (credit: JAXA )

The Japanese space agency's first lunar lander arrived on the the Moon's surface Friday, but a power system problem threatens to cut short its mission.

Japan's robotic Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) mission began a 20-minute final descent using two hydrazine-fueled engines to drop out of orbit. After holding to hover at 500 meters and then 50 meters altitude, SLIM pulsed its engines to fine-tune its vertical descent before touching down at 10:20 am EST (15:20 UTC).

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which manages the SLIM mission, streamed the landing live on YouTube. About two hours after the touchdown, JAXA officials held a press conference to confirm the spacecraft made a successful landing, apparently quite close to its target. SLIM aimed to settle onto the lunar surface adjacent to a nearly 900-foot (270-meter) crater named Shioli, located in a region called the Sea of Nectar on the near side of the Moon.

Enlarge / Astrobotic's Peregrine lander carries 20 payloads, including five NASA-funded science instruments. (credit: Astrobotic )

A few hours after a successful liftoff on United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket, Astrobotic's first commercial lunar lander ran into serious trouble. The robotic Peregrine lander, still in orbit around Earth, appears to have a propellant leak that will prevent it from reaching the Moon.

There are 20 payloads aboard the Peregrine lunar lander, including five from NASA, which is paying Astrobotic about $108 million for delivery of its science instruments to the Moon's surface. Peregrine was the first US-owned lunar lander to launch to the Moon in more than 50 years, and Astrobotic is one of 14 companies selected by NASA to deliver the agency's scientific instruments to the lunar surface.

This program, called Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), is aimed at flying robotic precursor missions to the Moon before NASA astronauts land on the lunar surface in the agency's Artemis program. Astrobotic's CLPS mission was first to the launch pad.

Enlarge / The first Vulcan rocket fires off its launch pad in Florida. (credit: United Launch Alliance)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—Right out of the gate, United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan rocket chased perfection.

The Vulcan launcher hit its marks after lifting off from Florida's Space Coast for the first time early Monday, successfully deploying a commercial robotic lander on a journey to the Moon and keeping ULA's unblemished success record intact.

"Yeehaw! I am so thrilled, I can’t tell you how much!" exclaimed Tory Bruno, ULA's president and CEO, shortly after Vulcan's departure from Cape Canaveral. "I am so proud of this team. Oh my gosh, this has been years of hard work. So far, this has been an absolutely beautiful mission."

Enlarge / The Moon sets over sandstone formations on the Navajo Nation. (credit: David McNew/Getty Images )

Science instruments aren't the only things hitching a ride to the Moon on a commercial lunar lander ready for launch Monday. Two companies specializing in "space burials" are sending cremated human remains to the Moon, and this doesn't sit well with the Navajo Nation.

The Navajo people, one of the nation's largest Indigenous groups, hold the Moon sacred, and putting human remains on the lunar surface amounts to desecration, according to Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren.

"The sacredness of the Moon is deeply embedded in the spirituality and heritage of many Indigenous cultures, including our own," Nygren said in a statement. "The placement of human remains on the Moon is a profound desecration of this celestial body revered by our people."

Enlarge / NASA astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders wave to onlookers aboard the USS Yorktown after splashdown to end the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon. (credit: NASA/AFP via Getty Images )

Frank Borman, an Air Force test pilot, astronaut, and accomplished businessman who led the first crew to fly to the Moon in 1968, died Tuesday in Montana, NASA said Thursday. He was 95 years old.

“Today we remember one of NASA’s best," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. "Astronaut Frank Borman was a true American hero. Among his many accomplishments, he served as the commander of the Apollo 8 mission, humanity’s first mission around the Moon in 1968."

Borman, joined by crewmates Jim Lovell and Bill Anders, orbited the Moon 10 times over the course of about 20 hours. They were the first people to see the Earth from another world, a memory of "wonderment" Borman recalled decades later. Apollo 8 produced one of the most famous photos ever taken, the iconic "Earthrise" showing a blue orb—the setting for all of human history until then—suspended in the blackness of space over the charcoal gray of the Moon's cratered surface.

Enlarge / Modeling has shown how material ejected from the Earth by a massive collision could have formed the Moon. Now the models are being used to look at what happened inside the Earth. (credit: NASA )

Seismic waves created by earthquakes as they travel through the planet's interior change speed and direction as they move through different materials. Things like rock type, density, and temperature all alter the travel of these waves, allowing scientists to gradually build up a picture of the Earth's crust and mantle, spotting things like the rise of plumes of hot mantle material, as well as the colder remains of tectonic plates that dropped off the surface of the Earth long ago.

There are some things that show up in these images, however, that aren't easy to explain. Deep in the Earth's mantle there are two regions where seismic waves slow down, termed large low-velocity provinces. This slowdown is consistent with the materials being higher density, so it's not really a surprise that they're sitting near the core. But that doesn't explain why there are two distinct regions of them or why they appear to contain material that has been there since the formation of the Solar System.

Now, a team of scientists has tied the two regions' existence back to a catastrophic event that happened early in our Solar System's history: a giant collision with a Mars-sized planet that ultimately created our Moon.

Enlarge (credit: Master/Getty )

The Moon is slated to be our next frontier. When Artemis 3 takes off (tentatively) near the end of 2025, it will be the first mission since the Apollo era to land humans on our satellite. By then, there might be a new way to get around on the Moon’s gray dust, which could at least mitigate damage from sharp particles of lunar regolith.

An international team of researchers with the ESA PAVER project has figured out a way to melt Moondust—or at least an ESA-developed stimulant for it—with lasers. The researchers fired laser beams at lunar soil to create interlocking pavers that could be used to construct paved roads and landing pads. The hardened molten regolith is tough enough to withstand the weight of rovers and other spacecraft with minimal dust kickup, and it could all be made right there on the Moon.

“This technology is envisioned to play a major role in the first phase (survivability) of lunar infrastructure and base development, and over time to contribute to all phases of lunar exploration,” the researchers said in a study recently published in Scientific Reports .