Japanese moon lander reaches surface, but fate uncertain

Less than a day after a crippled commercial U.S. moon lander dropped back to Earth and shed up the environment, the Japanese area company tried its very first robot moon touchdownFriday While telemetry suggested the spacecraft got to the surface, it was not right away understood if it made it through the journey.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, launched the ingenious Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, spacecraftSept 7 from the Tanegashima Space Center in southerlyJapan The 1,600-pound probe got on an originally elliptical exerciser orbit around the moon’s posts on Christmas Day and transitioned to a round 373-mile-high orbit previously this month.