South Korea’s Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter has successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. -AP
South Korea has joined the stampede to the moon with the launch of a lunar orbiter that will scout for future landing spots.
The satellite launched Thursday by SpaceX is taking a long, circuitous route to save fuel and will arrive in December.
If successful, it will join US and Indian spacecraft already operating around the Moon, and a Chinese rover exploring the far side of the Moon.
India, Russia and Japan have new moon missions set to launch later this year or next, as do a host of private companies in the US and elsewhere. And NASA is next with the debut of its mega moon rocket at the end of August.
South Korea’s US$180 million ($258 million) mission, the country’s first step in lunar exploration, features a square, solar-powered satellite designed to pass just 100 kilometers above the lunar surface. Scientists hope to collect geological and other data for at least a year from this low polar orbit.
It is South Korea’s second space launch in six weeks.
In June, it successfully launched a package of satellites into orbit around Earth for the first time using its own rocket. The first attempt failed last fall, and the test satellite failed to reach orbit.
And in May, South Korea joined a NASA-led coalition to explore the moon with astronauts in the coming years and decades. NASA is aiming for the first launch of its Artemis program later this month. The goal is to send an empty crew capsule around the moon and back to test systems before a crew goes aboard in two years.
Danuri, Korean for “enjoy the moon,” carries six scientific instruments, including a camera for NASA. It is designed to peer into the permanently shadowed, ice-filled craters of the lunar poles. NASA favors the lunar south pole for future astronaut outposts because of evidence of frozen water.
South Korea plans to land its own spacecraft on the moon, a robotic probe, in 2030 or so.
“Danuri is just the beginning,” Sang-Ryool Lee, president of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, said in SpaceX’s launch webcast.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket carrying Danuri lifted off from Cape Canaveral near sunset. The first stage booster, making its sixth flight, landed on an ocean platform a few minutes later for recycling.
It was the third space photograph of the day from the US
United Launch Alliance kicked things off at sunrise in Florida, launching an Atlas V rocket carrying an infrared missile detection satellite for the US Space Force. Then Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket company sent six passengers on a quick trip into space from West Texas.
Around the world, the Rocket Lab company launched a classified small satellite from New Zealand for the US National Reconnaissance Office.