South Korea’s first lunar mission sent breathtaking images from its position in low lunar orbit to Earth.
Danuri, also called the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in early August last year and reached lunar orbit four months later in mid-December. This mission adds South Korea to a handful of countries that have held successful Moon missions, which include, among others, Japan, China, and India.
The Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) has released images from the $180 million Danuri, showing the cratered and textured lunar surface in the foreground and the distant Earth behind. Images were captured by the Lunar Terrain Imager (LUTI) developed by KARI on December 24 and December 28, respectively. Engineers will use images from this camera to help determine regions for a robotic South Korean Moon landing mission aimed to launch around 2032.
According to a statement by KARI, the 678-kilogram KPLO completed a series of burns in mid- and late-December, and the spacecraft entered its planned orbit on December 26, at an average of 100 kilometers above the lunar surface.
The orbiter is currently undergoing commissioning before embarking on its official science mission, which is scheduled to take about a year.
Five of Danuri’s six payloads were developed by KARI, but NASA also has one. ShadowCam is designed to detect permanently shadowed regions at the lunar poles for clues of water-ice deposits, potentially providing valuable data for future missions in NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to transport astronauts to the Moon in 2025 or 2026.
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