South Korea's lunar probe will soon join the U.S. in studying the moon's many scientific mysteries 📝: jeffreykluger
, that rarefied group will add a new member, when South Korea’s Danuri probe is launched from the Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Danuri will make a long, looping moonward journey, settling into lunar orbit by mid-December.
The 678 kg probe is relatively small as these things go, but it’s packed with five scientific instruments. Among the ones researchers are most excited about is the PolCam, which will study the moon’s surface in polarized light, analyzing the density of its grains of dust. This will help explain so-called “fairy castle” structures, mini-towers of dust that could not form on Earth because the greater gravity of our planet would pull them to the ground.
But South Korea is not the only country making moon news this week. So too is the U.S., and its venerable Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter , which launched in 2009 and has been orbiting the moon ever since. There are a lot of obstacles facing future astronauts who would live at the permanent lunar bases NASA hopes to build. For starters, there’s the constant bombardment of cosmic rays, solar radiation, and micrometeorites.
Not long after the LRO arrived at the moon, it discovered pits in the lunar surface that looked like they lead to lava tubes—now-empty cave-like channels through which lava used to run. Building lunar habitats within the caves would offer natural protection from the micrometeorite, cosmic ray, and solar radiation problems. But there’s still the temperature to reckon with—or there was.
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