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NASA’s lunar research spacecraft has captured a remarkable moment: Danuri, South Korea’s Moon orbiter, streaking past while traveling on a nearly parallel orbit in the opposite direction.
NASA recently released a series of images showing Danuri, also known as KPLO, the lunar orbiter operated by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, speeding across the Moon’s surface. According to Newsweek, the images were taken on March 5 and 6, when NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Danuri were moving along nearly parallel paths, but in opposite directions.
In the newly released black-and-white images, Danuri appears as a blurred streak cutting across the lunar surface. The pictures were captured by the LRO operations team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center using the spacecraft’s narrow-angle camera when LRO passed close enough to image the Korean orbiter.
Even with the camera’s extremely short exposure time, Danuri still appears blurred to roughly ten times its actual size in the opposite direction of travel because of the very high relative speed between the two spacecraft, around 11,500 kilometers per hour. That speed meant the operations team had to time the maneuver with exceptional precision so the camera would be pointed in exactly the right direction at exactly the right moment.
“To be clear, the Danuri orbiter is not some weird, skinny string of pixels — it’s actually a fairly normal-looking orbiter,” explained Paul Byrne, an associate professor of earth, environmental, and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. “But its incredible speed is what makes it appear smeared in the LRO camera.”
LRO was launched by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in 2009 to study the Moon’s surface and help answer fundamental questions about the origin and evolution of both the Moon and Earth. It operates in orbit at an altitude of about 50 kilometers above the lunar surface.
Danuri, meanwhile, was launched from the United States aboard a SpaceX rocket in August 2022. The spacecraft is designed to test key technologies for lunar approach and exploration. It is also tasked with measuring magnetic forces on the Moon’s surface, assessing potential resources, and mapping terrain to help identify future landing sites. Danuri completes one orbit around the Moon roughly every two hours.
NASA recently released a series of images showing Danuri, also known as KPLO, the lunar orbiter operated by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, speeding across the Moon’s surface. According to Newsweek, the images were taken on March 5 and 6, when NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Danuri were moving along nearly parallel paths, but in opposite directions.
In the newly released black-and-white images, Danuri appears as a blurred streak cutting across the lunar surface. The pictures were captured by the LRO operations team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center using the spacecraft’s narrow-angle camera when LRO passed close enough to image the Korean orbiter.
Even with the camera’s extremely short exposure time, Danuri still appears blurred to roughly ten times its actual size in the opposite direction of travel because of the very high relative speed between the two spacecraft, around 11,500 kilometers per hour. That speed meant the operations team had to time the maneuver with exceptional precision so the camera would be pointed in exactly the right direction at exactly the right moment.
“To be clear, the Danuri orbiter is not some weird, skinny string of pixels — it’s actually a fairly normal-looking orbiter,” explained Paul Byrne, an associate professor of earth, environmental, and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. “But its incredible speed is what makes it appear smeared in the LRO camera.”
LRO was launched by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in 2009 to study the Moon’s surface and help answer fundamental questions about the origin and evolution of both the Moon and Earth. It operates in orbit at an altitude of about 50 kilometers above the lunar surface.
Danuri, meanwhile, was launched from the United States aboard a SpaceX rocket in August 2022. The spacecraft is designed to test key technologies for lunar approach and exploration. It is also tasked with measuring magnetic forces on the Moon’s surface, assessing potential resources, and mapping terrain to help identify future landing sites. Danuri completes one orbit around the Moon roughly every two hours.
