“WJAXA announced on the social networking site data”.

He added that there is a “possibility” to relaunch the Japanese unit, which was suffering from a problem with its solar panels.

The Japanese Space Agency added: “According to telemetry data, Slim’s solar cells face west. If sunlight reaches the moon from the west in the future, we believe it is possible to produce energy, and we are currently preparing for restoration.”

On Saturday, Japan became the fifth country that was able to land a spacecraft on the moon, as JAXA announced that it completed the landing on the moon at 00:20 on Saturday (15:20 on Friday in Lisbon).

Only the United States, the former Soviet Union, China, and recently India have been able to land on the moon.

More than fifty years after humans first set foot on the moon – the United States in 1969 – the moon is once again the center of a global race.

In addition to the United States and China, Russia also dreams of reviving the space glory of the former Soviet Union, by joining forces with China and India, which were able to make the first landing on the moon last summer.

Japan's first two attempts to land on the moon failed. In 2022, the JAXA probe, Omotenashi, aboard the Artemis 1 mission in North America, suffered a fatal battery failure shortly after being launched into space.

In April, a module belonging to the private Japanese start-up I Space crashed on the surface of the moon, after failing in the landing phase.

Read also: Japan is the fifth country to reach the moon