NASA’s LRO Captures Blurred Image of Korea’s Danuri Lunar Orbiter in Motion

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured a series of images of the Korean spacecraft Danuri as it whizzed by. The LRO ship pointed its camera down to take pictures of the Danuri ship while flying about 5 km higher. The images, released by NASA, show Danuri as a blurred line cutting across the Moon’s surface.

Danuri is a lunar orbiter operated by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute and was launched from the US on a SpaceX rocket in August 2022. It helps test the technologies needed to reach and explore the Moon. The spacecraft will measure magnetic forces on the lunar surface, evaluate resources and map the terrain to help select future landing sites. Danuri orbits the Moon with an orbital period of about two hours at an altitude of about 50 km above the lunar surface.

The blurred image of Danuri in LRO’s cameras is due to its tremendous speed, which was about 11,500 km/h. Paul Byrne, an associate professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Washington University St. Louis, explains that although Danuri is not a slender block of pixels, its high speed caused it to appear blurred in LRO’s cameras. The operations team had to have very delicate timing so that the camera turned in the right direction at the right time to capture these images.