NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has caught up in its own game.
That Lunar reconnaissance vehicle (LRO) has been studying the Moon closely since 2009. It has also imaged other active lunar spacecraft, such as China’s Yuto 2 Roverand even other lunar orbits (Opens in a new tab).
And now, a newcomer to lunar orbit recently detected the LRO from just 11.2 miles (18 kilometers) away as the two probes fired at each other in their respective orbits.
Related: Stunning moon photo by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) Danori’s spaceship It arrives in lunar orbit in mid-December 2022. Inside is ShadowCam, a NASA-funded ultra-sensitive optical imager capable of providing View of a shady area by collecting light reflected from nearby fields and light reflected from our planet on the moon, orEarth radiation. “
This time, instead of illuminating the dark crater, ShadowCam captured a sunlit LRO as the two spacecraft passed over a patch of moon shrouded in darkness.
The stunt required coordination and timing, as the two vehicles passed each other at a relative speed of 7,113 mph (11,447 km/h). NASA’s LRO Mission Operations team at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland oriented the spacecraft relative to Downey and the Sun to allow lighting of the radiators and rear of the spacecraft, according to surat (Opens in a new tab) on the ShadowCam webpage.
ShadowCam’s high near convergence speed and exposure time results in a four times overexposed LRO in the final image. An animation from the ShadowCam team showing LRO features captured in images, including the spacecraft’s solar panels, radiators, and high-gain antenna, by switching from the captured image to a high-resolution computer-generated image.
ShadowCam, which builds on the LRO’s powerful main camera, was used to identify shadowed areas on the moon’s south pole ahead of NASA’s Artemis 3 mission, and map permanently shadowed areas. (Artemis 3 will land astronauts near the south pole, the first manned probe to return to the lunar surface since Apollo 17 in 1972.) Meanwhile, Danuri has another camera onboard, which recently captured an extraordinary view of the lunar features that famous.
Near home, the Earth-observing Maxar satellite recently picked up a rocket A closer look at NASA’s Landsat 8 A spacecraft in low Earth orbit, demonstrating how satellite imagery can be used to verify the health or cause of a satellite problem.
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2023-05-14 13:29:44
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