Yeah, that's the bigger deal. They lost an engine and still managed a soft landing. They just landed upside down -- but the solar cells might still work.

It's actually amazingly impressive! In contrast, in the past few years Israel, India and even Russia have had disappointing failures trying to land on the moon - not because they're engineers aren't as good, but because it's just really freaking hard to get right and a lot of unexpected things can happen.

The Japanese team lost an engine nozzle and with it about 40% of their thrust as they were mid landing. Losing 1 out of 2 engines is the kind of critical malfunction that usually dooms a mission (like it did once for India); but regardless, their software was able to adjust on the fly, automatically switch into a different flight mode, and still put the lander exactly where they wanted it.

This is a remarkable success where so many talented others have failed. In a couple of weeks, the sun will be shining from the right direction to hit their solar panels and their mission should continue!

Having played rp-1 and had multiple landers slam into the moon at 2 km/s due to random engine failures, having the probe simply be upside down is quite fortunate.

Now I want to play RP-1 again. Never did manage to get to a manned mars mission that survived.