Next Tuesday, the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, South Korea’s first lunar mission, will be launched into space. It carries scientific instruments developed by the country’s leading scientific organizations and NASA.
South Korea’s Lunar Mission
On August 2, the Falcon 9 rocket will launch South Korea’s first lunar mission into space. The device called Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) is designed to explore our moon in orbit. It has its own name “Danuri”, which is derived from the Korean words for “pleasure” and “Moon”.
The launch of KPLO is the first step in the implementation of South Korea’s ambitious lunar program. In the middle of the rest, it provides for the landing of a robotic mission on our moon by 2030. For this, the country abandoned the mission to the asteroid.
The device carries six different devices. Five of them are developed by the Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI). These are the LUTI wide-focus camera, PolCam polarimetric camera, KMAG magnetometer, KGRS gamma spectrograph and an experiment called Disruption Tolerant Network Experiment Payload. The sixth high-sensitivity camera developed by NASA.
Mission objectives
The KPLO lunar mission will last at least a year. At this time, the device will fly around our moon, measure its magnetic field and make a topographic map. Danuri is also tasked with searching for valuable resources: water ice, helium-3, uranium, silicon and aluminum.
After the device is launched into space by the carrier, it will fly to the moon with a ballistic trajectory. So, KPLO will get its destination only in mid-December. It is expected that it will help determine the best sites for future missions.
According to www.space.com
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