Last week, on Jan 18, the Japanese space agency JAXA attempted to land the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) on the lunar surface. SLIM was designed to demonstrate technology for precision landing within a 100m target radius with image recognition based navigation. The mission, aka Moon Sniper, included two small rovers both equipped with small cameras.
Unfortunately, after landing, the spacecraft solar panels failed to generate power to charge the batteries. After 2.5 hours of operation and communications, the spacecraft was put into low-power mode. Telemetry indicates that the spacecraft is probably lying upside down with solar panels facing west. It is hoped that during lunar afternoon in a few days, the solar cells may get sunlight and start charging the batteries.
The two rovers were deployed and sent back data, during their few hour mission (they ran on non-rechargeable batteries).
SLIM had an unusual landing configuration — instead of landing vertically, it was designed to tilt over and rest on one of its sides, with the solar panels facing up. But unfortunately, things did not go according to plan.
As the saying does, space is hard.
Now, let’s try to successfully land the solution to today’s puzzle, composed in 1888 by Arthur Ford Mackenzie (1861-1905).
P.S.
The chess puzzle is published on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:00 p.m. ET.
It is customary for advanced players to wait till midnight ET before posting the full solution. Before then, they provide some stats about the solution (e.g., the minimum number of distinct checkmate moves), help guide others, and sometimes post hints. But there are no hard-and-fast rules; feel free to post comments as you please.