Lunar orbiter sends images of dark side of the moon

Danuri, Korea’s first lunar orbiter, sent pictures of the dark side of the moon taken on its mission orbit, the Science Ministry said Wednesday.

Top: An image of Tsiolkovskiy Crater on the far side of the moon, taken on March 22 by the Danuri lunar orbiter's high-resolution camera. Above: An image of Vallis Schrodinger, a 320 kilometer (199-mile) long and 8 to 10 kilometer wide valley near the south lunar pole, taken by Danuri on March 24 [MINISTRY OF SCIENCE AND ICT]

Danuri, Korea’s first lunar orbiter, sent pictures of the dark side of the moon taken on its mission orbit, the Science Ministry said Wednesday.

The Ministry of Science and ICT and Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) on Wednesday released images of the lunar surface captured by Danuri, also known as the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, 250 days after the domestically developed spacecraft left Earth.

A hundred and two days into its mission as of Wednesday, Danuri is currently circling the moon at an altitude of 100 kilometers (62.1 miles).

Using a KARI-developed high-resolution camera, the Lunar Terrain Imager (LUTI), Danuri took pictures of Tsiolkovskiy, one of prominent craters located in the far side of the moon, on March 22.

The orbiter also took images of Vallis Schrödinger, a linear, 320-kilometer-long valley near the south lunar pole, and Szilard M crater in the northern hemisphere of the moon, on March 24, which marked the day that Danuri circled the moon for the 1,000th time.

The images captured by Danuri are the first photographs of the far side of the moon taken by Korea.

Also released were photographs taken with a wide-angle polarimetric camera equipped on the Danuri orbiter, which captured the polarized light at the Wichmann crater on the near side of the moon. The wide-angle polarimetric camera was developed by the Korea Astronomy & Space Science Institute to analyze lunar surface particles.

An image of Wichmann crater taken in January by the Korea Astronomy & Space Science Institute's wide-angle polarimetric camera installed on the Danuri lunar orbiter [MINISTRY OF SCIENCE AND ICT]

Research results based on data collected by Danuri and the footage taken by the KARI’s LUTI camera will be released to the public starting January next year.

The world’s first full-scale polarimetric lunar map will be released in January 2024 as well.

Danuri was launched on Aug. 5, carried by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The domestically developed lunar orbiter entered its mission orbit in December after traveling a cumulative 7.3 million kilometers for over four months.

The real-time location of Danuri and collected image data can be found on the Danuri website (https://www.kari.re.kr/kplo) starting Wednesday.

BY SHIN HA-NEE [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]