NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter), which has been circling and finding out the moon for 15 years, captured a number of pictures of Korea Aerospace Analysis Institute’s Danuri lunar orbiter final month. The 2 spacecraft, touring in almost parallel orbits, zipped previous one another in reverse instructions between March 5 and 6, 2024.
LRO’s slender angle digicam (one in a collection of cameras often known as “LROC”) captured the pictures featured right here throughout three orbits that occurred to be shut sufficient to Danuri’s to seize snapshots.
As a result of quick relative velocities between the 2 spacecraft (about 7,200 miles, or 1,500 kilometers, per hour), the LRO operations group at NASA’s Goddard Area Flight Heart in Greenbelt, Maryland, wanted beautiful timing in pointing LROC to the best place on the proper time to catch a glimpse of Danuri, the Republic of Korea’s first spacecraft on the moon.
Danuri has been in lunar orbit since December 2022. Though LRO’s digicam publicity time was very brief, solely 0.338 milliseconds, Danuri nonetheless seems smeared to 10 occasions its dimension in the wrong way of journey due to the relative excessive journey velocities between the 2 spacecraft.
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On the first imaging alternative, LRO was oriented down 43 levels from its typical place of trying down on the lunar floor to seize Danuri (streaked throughout the center) from 3 miles, or 5 kilometers, above it. Credit score: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State College
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Throughout the subsequent encounter, LRO was nearer to Danuri, about 2.5 miles, or 4 kilometers, and oriented 25 levels towards it. Credit score: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State College
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Final spring, Danuri had a chance to {photograph} LRO. Its ShadowCam instrument, supplied by NASA, snapped this picture of LRO because the Korean spacecraft handed about 11 miles (18 kilometers) above it on April 7, 2023. Based mostly on the design of LRO’s slender angle cameras, the ShadowCam was constructed to take high-resolution pictures of the moon’s completely shadowed areas, the place frozen water is probably going trapped. The relative velocity between the 2 spacecraft was about 7,000 miles, or 11,000 kilometers, per hour. Credit score: NASA/KARI/Arizona State College
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NASA’s LRO finds picture op because it zips previous South Korea’s Danuri moon orbiter (2024, April 8)
retrieved 8 April 2024
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