The Danuri probe, launched by South Korea four months ago, has finally reached the moon. Soon it will begin its mission in the orbit of our satellite. The implementation of even more ambitious plans is ahead of the country.
“Danuri” reached the moon
South Korean probe “Danuri”, also known as the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), has finally reached the moon. It launched from Earth on August 4 with the help of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Since then, he traveled through space on the most economical trajectory that could take him to the moon.
The flight of “Danuri” lasted 134 days. During this time, he covered 5.4 million kilometers, approaching the Moon in a spiral. He made several along the way pictures of the Earth. On December 17, at 21:45 Kyiv time, it performed its last maneuver and ended up in the orbit of our satellite.
However, before starting its scientific program, “Danura” will have to change its orbit five more times. He has until December 28 to complete these preparations and be in the target orbit with an altitude of 100 km.
Moon ambitions of South Korea
The “Danuri” device weighs 678 kg. Its development cost South Korea 180 million dollars. This is the country’s first scientific mission that went beyond the Earth’s orbit. In total, it carries six instruments for the study of the Moon.
Five of them were developed by the East Asian country itself. It is a terrain scanner, a wide-angle polarimetric camera, a magnetometer, a gamma spectrograph and a device for testing new network technology. The sixth was the ShadowCam camera developed by NASA, designed to observe permanently shadowed craters on the surface of the Moon and search for traces of water in them.
South Korea, like the rest of the countries, shows considerable interest in the study and development of the Moon. And “Danuri” should become just one of the steps to the landing of a robotic probe on its surface. This should happen in 2032. And already in 2045 the country is planning put an automatic device on Mars.
According to the materials www.space.com
