The Japanese toy company Takara Tomy is also going to contribute to lunar exploration thanks to this new device that looks like a friendly robot.
The space race has a new player in the form of Japan, which, as planned, the SLIM lander launched aboard the H-2A rocket on September 6, will become the first Japanese spacecraft to make a soft landing on the lunar surface.
The curious thing is that, once there, it will deploy a particular scout robot called Lunar Excursion Vehicle 2 (LEV-2), which looks like a toy, shaped like a small, spherical, metallic object a little larger than a tennis ball.
This robot It will rotate around the lunar surface capturing images, specifically of the surrounding lunar crater.
The intelligent lunar research lander was developed by the Japanese space agency JAXA to perform the country’s first soft landing.
On the other hand, SLIM is a small lander that measures 2.4 m high and 2.7 m wide, and weighs 590 kilos of which 2/3 is made up of fuel.
This spacecraft aims to land inside Shioli Crater, a 300 m wide impact zone within Mare Nectaris on the visible side of the Moonsometime in early 2024.
The idea is then for SLIM to release LEV-2 from the lander about 1.8m above the lunar surface, a small robot weighing 255g and which will capture images of the surroundings.
The small robot will transmit its data to Earth via LEV-1, a separate probe that will also land aboard SLIM.
LEV-2, also known as Sora-Q, was jointly developed by JAXA and Japanese toymaker Takara Tomyand is made of a special type of aluminum and plastic designed to withstand the harsh temperatures of the Moon.
“We adopted robust and safe design technology for children’s toys, which minimized the number of components used in the vehicle and increased its reliability,” they say.
“This robot was successfully developed within a limited size and mass using size and weight reduction technologies and the shape-changing mechanism developed for toys by TOMY and Doshisha University, as well as the small control board and camera. and energy efficient developed by Sony Group”, he concludes.