렛미톡광장

Danuri Reaches Lunar Orbit
작성자  : 관리자
On January 3, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI)* released a series of amazing photos of Earth and the moon. The images were captured and sent back by Danuri, Korea’s first ever lunar orbiter.

The first photo was taken on December 24 from a distance of 345 kilometers above the moon. This was just one week after the spacecraft had successfully entered into lunar orbit.

The image shows a striking scene of a black-and-white Earth rising majestically over the moon’s rocky, cratered surface.

A second photo was taken four days later from a much closer altitude of 124 kilometers. In it, our planet appears partly covered by the moon’s shadow. Additional high-resolution images of Earth were also taken on December 31 and January 1 to welcome the New Year.

Launched on August 4, 2022, aboard Space X’s Falcon 9 rocket, the Danuri mission marked Korea’s first foray into deep space exploration. Its primary objective is to map the moon’s surface and resources in preparation for future human visits.

To achieve this aim, the 500-kilogram Danuri probe is equipped with six highly specialized instruments. These range from a Lunar Terrain Imager to map the moon’s surface to a Magnetometer and Gamma Ray Spectrometer to measure magnetism and radiation on the moon.

There is also the hypersensitive ShadowCam, which was developed by U.S. space agency NASA to look for frozen water on the dark side of the moon. Finding water will be crucial for future missions, as it not only gives astronauts something to drink but can also be transformed into rocket fuel for the return voyage.

With the launch of Danuri, Korea hopes to join the club of space-faring nations. The country plans to land a rover on the moon by 2032 and on Mars by 2045.

* Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) 한국항공우주연구원