Danuri is South Korea's first spacecraft on the Moon
The US space agency NASA has released images of a mysterious silver surfboard-shaped object which was orbiting the Moon. The pictures were taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). They depict a thin horizontal line of an object resembling the board of Marvel's 'Silver Surfer' character. However, the mysterious object is not something from the comic book world or superhero movies or even an Unidentified flying object (UFO). NASA's LRO actually captured its South Korean counterpart, as the two orbiters whizzed past one another, the space agency said.
According to NASA's press note, LRO captured several images of the Danuri lunar orbiter sent by its Korean counterpart, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, as the two zipped past each other in parallel but opposite directions between March 5 and 6. The space agency explained that the image of Danuri, which has been orbiting the Moon since 2022, appears to be distorted because of the extremely fast relative velocity between it and the LRO.
"Although LRO's camera exposure time was very short, only 0.338 milliseconds, Danuri still appears smeared to 10 times its size in the opposite direction of travel because of the relative high travel velocities between the two spacecraft," NASA wrote.
Danuri is South Korea's first spacecraft on the Moon and has been in lunar orbit since December 2022.
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The space agency said in its report that the LRO operations team at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland needed "exquisite timing" in pointing LROC to the right place at the right time to catch a glimpse of Danuri. The task, however, was not easy because of the fast relative velocities between the two spacecraft, which is about 11,500 kilometres per hour.
NASA said that LRO's narrow-angle camera captured the images during three orbits that happened to be close enough to Danuri's to grab the images.
Notably, LRO was launched in 2009. Since then, it has collected crucial data with its seven powerful instruments. It has emerged as an invaluable contribution to the study of the Moon.