South Korea is headed to the Moon, having efficiently launched its first lunar mission on Thursday. Loaded aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) started its 4 and a half month-long journey to the Moon at 7:08 p.m. EDT, taking off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The KPLO was developed by a collaboration between NASA and the Korea Aerospace Analysis Institute — South Korea’s area company. Its launch is a big mission not just for South Korea, but in addition for SpaceX. Whereas Elon Musk’s area firm has launched quite a few rockets over a few years, they usually do not goal for the Moon. SpaceX beforehand used a Falcon 9 rocket to launch Israeli lunar lander Beresheet in 2019, nevertheless the mission finally failed with the lander crashing on the Moon’s floor.
Thursday’s KPLO launch was a promising begin, however we’ll have to attend till mid-December to seek out out if the mission is a hit. Quite than travelling on to the Moon, the KPLO — often known as “Danuri” — will use ballistic lunar switch (BLT) to be able to attain its vacation spot. This method makes use of the Solar, Moon, and Earth’s gravitational pulls to put the orbiter into the Moon’s path, permitting it to get caught in lunar orbit. This implies the Danuri will use a lot much less gasoline, however can even take an extended time to get to the Moon.
Ought to it efficiently attain the Moon, the Danuri’s mission is to develop applied sciences for lunar exploration, conduct scientific investigation akin to surveying the floor atmosphere, and display and validate present area applied sciences. It’ll orbit the Moon at 100 km (62 mi) for one yr, then descend to 70 km (44 mi) or decrease if the mission is prolonged.
The orbiter is carrying a number of scientific devices to allow it to conduct its mission, together with a magnetometer for measuring magnetic fields and a gamma-ray spectrometer for measuring gamma radiation. It additionally has a lunar terrain imager, a wide-angle polarimetric digital camera, and NASA’s high-sensitivity digital camera ShadowCam, all of that are tasked with amassing photos of various areas of the Moon.
Apparently, the Danuri has a delay/disruption tolerant networking (DTN) experiment onboard as effectively, intending to check its capabilities for transferring information by area. Just like an area web, DTN know-how has already efficiently been utilized by the Worldwide Area Station, however this would be the first time it has been examined past the Earth’s orbit.
With Danuri’s launch, South Korea has joined the brief checklist of nations who’ve tried to succeed in the Moon, together with the U.S., Russia, and China.
