Danuri, South Korea’s first deep space probe, finally reached the moon after a four-month voyage.
The Danuri The spacecraft was expected to begin orbiting the moon on Friday (Dec. 17) at 2:45 pm EST (1945 GMT, 2:45 am Nov. 17 in South Korea), according to the statement (Opens in a new tab) from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI). The first talk of the planned five devices burns on the 28th of December. to clear Danuri’s orbit around the moon, the way to explore will be clear to start with lunar science objects.
Danuri, also known as the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), will make its long and circuitous journey to the moon on Aug. 4. conducted in a * SpaceX A Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Station. The moon probe traveled 3.3 million miles (5.4 million kilometers) on its journey so far, KARI officials said.
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The successful launch put it into a lunar ballistic transfer orbit, which took the probe on a 134-day long, looping, fuel-cave cruise through the lunar surface. Finally, it entered a lunar polar orbit with an average altitude of 60 miles (100 kilometers) inside the lunar surface.
The 1,495-pound (678-kilogram) KPLO is South Korea’s first exploratory mission to go beyond Earth. That $180 million mission is ambitious; Danuri packs six separate science payloads designed to collect data for CNN some knowledge. Five of those instruments — a terrain imager, a wide-angle polarimetric camera, a magnetometer spectrometer, a gamma-ray spectrometer and a new payload test technology — were developed by Korean universities and research institutes.
NASA also has a presence on board in the form of a sixth payload: a highly sensitive camera ShadowCam This was designed to continue to delineate the lunar regions at the lunar poles, delineating the deposits of water ice. The data from the instrument can be useful to NASA’s Artemis programwhich aims to support the human presence on the moon.
After its first run to enter orbit, Danuri is expected to make four more lunar approaches on Dec. 21. Dec. 23 in the announcement (Opens in a new tab). All these days are in South Korea local time.
KPLO is part of a growing international interest in lunar activity. For example, Danuri reached the moon in a month after NASA’s arrival CAPSTONE sleep Propelling Artemis 1 The mission successfully launched into lunar orbit saw the Orion spacecraft return to Earth during Danuri’s journey to the moon.
Danuri also marks the first step toward South Korea’s even larger lunar ambitions, which also includes a robotic moon orbiter. 2032 (Opens in a new tab) and the 2015 Mars mission.
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