In a rare encounter, two lunar spacecraft crossed paths as they orbited the moon in opposite directions. NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured South Korea’s Pathfinder lunar orbiterAlso known as Danuri, in a series of snapshots taken against the moon’s cratered background.
The pair of lunar orbiters flew past each other between March 5 and 6, with nearly parallel orbits around the moon. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter used its narrow-angle camera to take a series of photos from three orbits around Danuri, close enough that the orbiter looked like a blurry blob.
In the first photo, Danuri appears as a black spot in the center of the bottom third. The Lunar Orbiter is a little dirty, so you really have to squint to find it. According to reports, when the photo was taken, Danuri was operating 5 miles (8 kilometers) below the LRO orbit, while the LRO was operating about 50 miles (80 kilometers) above the lunar surface. NASA.
For perspective, the image covers an area approximately 2 miles (3 kilometers) wide.
As they flew past, the relative speed between the two spacecraft was about 7,200 miles (11,500 kilometers) per hour. Danuri appeared squashed in the photo due to the speed of travel.
Although the LRO’s camera exposure time was only 0.338 milliseconds, the Danuri spacecraft was still stretched to about 10 times its size, smearing across the frame in the opposite direction to the direction it was heading.
In this image, the LRO is slightly closer to Danuri, about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) from the spacecraft and at an angle of 25 degrees to the spacecraft.
The Danuri orbiter can be seen in the highlighted white box. For perspective, the large bowl-shaped crater at the upper left of the image is 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) across.
This isn’t the first time the pair of lunar orbiters have taken photos of celestial objects. About a year ago, Danuri captures blurry image of LRO as it orbits the moon above a NASA spacecraft. Now, LRO has also reported Dannouri’s slimming photos.
The LRO is the Moon’s local paparazzi, taking photos of lunar missions, e.g. Chandrayaan 3and others less successful, e.g. Russian Luna 25 lander and Japan’s Hakuto-R M1 lander.
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