Danuri, South Korea’s first deep-space exploration mission, is lastly arriving on the moon after a four-month voyage.
The Danuri spacecraft was anticipated to start coming into lunar orbit at on Friday (Dec. 17) at 2:45 p.m. EST (1945 GMT, 2:45 a.m. Dec. 17 in South Korea), in keeping with a statement (opens in new tab) from the Korea Aerospace Analysis Institute (KARI). The maneuver, the primary of 5 deliberate engine burns by way of Dec. 28 to refine Danuri’s orbit round the moon, will clear the way in which for the probe to get began on its lunar science targets.
Danuri, also referred to as the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), started its lengthy and circuitous journey to the moon on Aug. 4, launching on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Area Drive Station. The moon probe has traveled over 3.3 million miles (5.4 million kilometers) on its journey to date, KARI officers have stated.
Associated: Every mission to the moon (reference)
The profitable launch put Danuri right into a ballistic lunar switch orbit, which took the probe on a 134-day-long, looping, fuel-efficient voyage by way of Earth-moon space. It lastly entered a polar lunar orbit with a goal common altitude of 60 miles (100 kilometers) above the lunar floor.
The 1,495-pound (678 kilograms) KPLO is South Korea’s first exploration mission to transcend Earth orbit. That $180 million mission is formidable; Danuri packs six separate science payloads designed to collect information for a variety of science objectives. 5 of these devices — a terrain imager, a Extensive-Angle Polarimetric Digicam, magnetometer, gamma-ray spectrometer and a brand new networking know-how check payload — have been developed by Korean universities and analysis organizations.
NASA additionally has a presence on board within the type of the sixth payload: a extremely delicate digital camera named ShadowCam that is designed to scope out completely shadowed areas on the lunar poles for hints of water-ice deposits. Knowledge from the instrument could possibly be useful for NASA’s Artemis program, which goals to create a sustainable human presence on the moon.
After its first maneuver to enter orbit, Danuri is anticipated to comply with it up with 4 extra throughout moon approaches on Dec. 21, Dec. 23, Dec. 26 and Dec. 28 earlier than settling right into a last orbit on Dec. 29, KARI wrote in a statement (opens in new tab). All of these dates are in native time for South Korea.
KPLO is a part of rising worldwide curiosity in and exercise on the moon. For instance, Danuri reached the moon a month after the arrival of NASA’s CAPSTONE cubesat. The company’s Artemis 1 mission efficiently launched to lunar orbit and noticed the Orion spacecraft return to Earth in the course of the time Danuri was en path to the moon.
Danuri additionally marks step one towards even grander lunar ambitions for South Korea, which additionally envisions a robotic moon touchdown round 2032 (opens in new tab) and a mission to Mars in 2045.
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