“Korean Lunar Orbiter Danuri Captures NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in Space”

The lunar orbiter ‘Danuri’ developed by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute has recently succeeded in photographing the ‘Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’ (LRO) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). At the time of filming, Danuri and LRO turned in opposite directions, reaching a relative speed of 3.2 km per second (approximately 11,500 km per hour). This is an example that shows the excellence of Korea’s long-distance space control technology and trajectory calculation.

According to the Korea Aerospace Research Institute on the 16th, on the 7th of last month, Danuri took a picture of LRO passing a point 18 km away from space. It was filmed with a shadow cam (NASA) and a high-resolution camera (LUTI (Hang Woo-yeon)) carried on Danuri. Only the shadow cam photos were released, but the photos taken with the high-resolution camera are currently being corrected.

Cho Yeong-ho, senior researcher at the Korea Aerospace Research Center, said, “Danuri and LRO rotate in opposite directions, reaching 9.4 times the speed of sound (3.2 km per second).” It means a lot,” he said. At the same time, he added, “The photos taken by Hang Woo-yeon’s high-resolution camera are being corrected.”

Danuri was launched on a US SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in August of last year. Danuri weighing 678 kg carried a total of six scientific payloads. Five payloads, including the high-resolution camera developed by Hang Woo-yeon, are domestically produced, and one seat was given to NASA Shadow Cam. ShadowCam was on a mission to image the permanent shadow region located at the lunar south pole.

NASA will perform the ‘Artemis’ mission to land astronauts around the south pole of the moon in 2025 by referring to the pictures taken by Shadow Cam. It means that Danuri will contribute to the human moon landing mission that resumes after 50 years. For this reason, Danuri is evaluated as a symbol of the ROK-US space alliance. In addition, Korea participates in Artemis missions in various fields.

The LRO photographed by Danuri this time is an orbiter that has been orbiting the moon at 1.6 km per second (about 5760 km) since 2009. Captured the trail of the Apollo spacecraft that landed on the moon in 2011. The camera mounted on the LRO has a high resolution of 25x25cm per pixel, but the shadow cam mounted on the Danuri is designed to be more than 200 times more sensitive to light.

An anonymous professor at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) said, “The meaning of being able to capture a space object at 3.2 km per second is a very significant achievement not only for the civilian population but also for the security of space.” can,” he explained.

[저작권자 @머니투데이, 무단전재 및 재배포 금지]