(Updated) NASA spacecraft spots Japan's SLIM lander on Moon’s surface

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured this image of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's SLIM lander on the Moon's surface on January 24, 2024.

Short for the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, the SLIM lander touched down on the lunar surface on January 19, 2024, at 10:20 a.m. EST (on January 20, 2024, at 0:20 am JST). Five days later post landing, LRO passed over the landing site and photographed the Japanese lander from an altitude of about 50 miles (80 km).

On Jan. 24, while flying about 50 miles (80 km) above the Moon's surface, our Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted @JAXA_en's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM). SLIM landed on Jan. 19 near Theophilus Crater on the Moon's near side. https://t.co/PhKQAcBvuM pic.twitter.com/bImXfkOQBB

— NASA Moon (@NASAMoon) January 26, 2024

Meanwhile, JAXA has also released pictures of SLIM captured by the Lunar Excursion Vehicle 2 (LEV-2), a small robot deployed from the lander. LEV-2, nicknamed "SORA-Q", is the world's first robot to conduct fully autonomous exploration on the lunar surface.

SLIM aims to demonstrate a high-precision landing technology for future lunar probes and verify this on the lunar moon with a small-scale probe.

Japan is the fifth nation to complete a soft landing on the lunar surface.

The Lunar Excursion Vehicle 2 (LEV-2 / SORA-Q) has successfully taken an image of the #SLIM spacecraft on the Moon. LEV-2 is the world's first robot to conduct fully autonomous exploration on the lunar surface. https://t.co/NOboD0ZJIr pic.twitter.com/mfuuceu2WA

— JAXA Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (@ISAS_JAXA_EN) January 25, 2024

Update 1

The Multi-Band Camera (MBC) onboard SLIM has started scientific observations and has successfully conducted 10-band high-resolution spectroscopic observations. The mission team observed a rock, nicknamed toy poodle, near the lander using the first light multi-band observation, JAXA tweeted on Monday, January 29.