Spider-Man pointing
Last month, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted a strange burst of an object streaking above the lunar surface.
And it turns out we are not look at a UFO – or, uh, maybe an unidentified lunar object – because there’s a perfectly human explanation for the lunar apparition.
It turns out the LRO image was photobombed by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), also known as Danuri, which “travels in nearly parallel orbits,” according to a press release from NASA.
Despite their similar orbits, it took impeccable timing to spot the spacecraft – an engineering feat in itself.
Blink of the moon
Danrui was launched in August 2022, becoming South Korea’s first lunar mission. The spacecraft, which entered lunar orbit in December 2022, is designed to help plan future missions to the lunar poles. It has also been used to demonstrate a “Lunar Internet”, a delay-tolerant network that could one day allow terrestrial resources to communicate with Earth.
Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center “needed exquisite timing to point the LROC in the right place at the right time to glimpse Danuri,” according to NASA.
The reason Danuri appears as a tiny sliver – rather than a conventional-looking spacecraft with two solar panels and an antenna – is that the LRO’s camera exposure time was extremely short, at just 0.338 milliseconds. As a result, Danuri appears “spread out up to ten times its size in the opposite direction of travel due to the relatively high travel speeds between the two spacecraft,” according to NASA.
In addition to freezing an orbiting spacecraft in time, the LRO also spotted the remains of crashed lunar landers. Earlier this year, it even fired and bounced a laser at India’s Vikram lander in an effort to improve the positioning systems of future landers.
Last year, Danuri’s ShadowCam, developed by NASA, spotted the LRO in a perfect role swap, showing the rear of the spacecraft perfectly reflecting the Sun’s rays.
Learn more about LRO: NASA probe shoots Indian lunar lander with laser
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