South Korea took part in the moonshot on Thursday by launching a lunar orbiter that will locate future landing sites. The SpaceX-launched satellite is taking a long, circuitous route to save fuel and will arrive in December. If successful, it will join spacecraft from the US and India already operating around the Moon and a Chinese rover exploring the far side of the moon. India, Russia and Japan have missions to the new moon set to launch later this year or next, as do many private companies in the US and elsewhere. And NASA is next with the debut of the big moon rocket in late August. South Korea’s US$180 million mission — the country’s first step in lunar exploration — features a solar-powered satellite designed to hop just 100 kilometers above the moon’s surface. Scientists expect to collect geological and other data for at least a year from this low polar orbit. It is South Korea’s second space launch in six weeks. In June, South Korea successfully launched a package of satellites into Earth orbit for the first time using its own rocket. The first attempt last fall went awry, with the test satellite failing to reach orbit. And in May, South Korea joined a NASA-led coalition to explore the moon with astronauts in the coming years and decades. NASA is targeting late this month for the first launch in the Artemis program. The goal is to send an empty crew capsule around the moon and back to test the systems before a crew climbs aboard in two years. Danuri — Korean for “enjoy the moon” — is carrying six scientific instruments, including a camera for NASA. It is designed to look at the permanently shadowed, ice-filled craters at the lunar poles. NASA favors lunar south pole for future astronaut outposts due to evidence of icy water. South Korea plans to land its own spacecraft — a robotic probe — on the Moon by around 2030. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying Danuri lifted off from Cape Canaveral near sunset. It was the third US space launch of the day United Launch Alliance kicked things off at sunrise in Florida, launching an Atlas V rocket carrying an infrared missile detection satellite for the US Space Force. Then Jeff Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin sent six passengers on a quick ride into space from West Texas. Around the world, Rocket Lab launched a small classified satellite from New Zealand for the US National Reconnaissance Office. —— The Associated Press Health and Science Section is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Science Education Division. AP is solely responsible for all content.
