Danuri (KPLO)
Danuri (Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter) — South Korea's first mission to the Moon and beyond Earth orbit, launched on 4 August 2022 (UTC). It took a long, fuel-saving route and entered lunar orbit in December 2022, then mapped the Moon from a polar orbit about 100 km up. Its NASA camera, ShadowCam, photographs the floors of craters in permanent shadow by the faint light reflected from their rims. In 2025 it was moved lower, and since September 2025 it has flown an orbit 60 to 200 km above the surface; its mission has been extended to the end of 2027.
Key facts
Mission & specifications
Mission
- Operator
- KARI (South Korea)
- Launched
- August 4, 2022
- Status
- Active
Trajectory
- Speed rel. the Moon
- 1.67 km/s
- Computed from the cached state vector, relative to the Moon
- Distance from the Sun
- 1 AU
- Computed from the cached position
- Distance from Earth
- 0.246 AU
- Computed from cached positions
- Distance from Venus
- 0.305 AU
- Computed from cached positions
Mission
Danuri, the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, is South Korea's first mission to the Moon and its first beyond Earth orbit, built by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute. It was launched on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral on 4 August 2022 at 23:08 UTC and took a slow, fuel-saving route out beyond the Moon's distance and back, which let the Sun's pull do much of the work of slowing it. On the way it tested a network protocol built to tolerate long delays and dropouts, sending pictures, video and the BTS song "Dynamite" to Earth from more than a million kilometres away. It was captured by the Moon in December 2022 and reached its mission orbit, about 100 km above both poles, at the end of that month, having needed three of its five planned braking burns. It carries five Korean instruments and ShadowCam, a NASA camera so sensitive that it photographs the floors of permanently shadowed craters by the light reflected from their sunlit walls; its first image, in February 2023, looked inside Shackleton crater at the south pole. Its gamma-ray spectrometer mapped elements such as thorium and recorded one of the brightest gamma-ray bursts ever seen, in October 2022. Its mission was extended twice. In February 2025 it was lowered to about 60 km, and since September 2025 it has flown an orbit 60 to 200 km above the surface. The plan is to continue to the end of 2027 and then fly it into the Moon.
- 2022Danuri launches toward the Moon on a Falcon 9 rocketLaunch
From Cape Canaveral, on a slow, fuel-saving route.
- 2022Captured by the MoonArrival
The first of three braking burns; its mission orbit, about 100 km up, follows on 27 December.
- 2023ShadowCam's first image releasedMilestone
Inside Shackleton crater, seen by light reflected from its walls.
- 2025Lowered to about 60 kmMilestone
- 2025Into an orbit 60 to 200 km upMilestone
Its mission extended to the end of 2027.
Images
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