In a rare encounter, two lunar spacecraft crossed paths as they orbited the Moon in opposite directions. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, also known as Danuri, in a series of snapshots taken against the cratered backdrop of the Moon.
The pair of lunar orbiters flew past each other between March 5 and 6, travelling in nearly parallel orbits around the Moon. LRO used its narrow-angle camera to snap a series of photos of Danuri during three orbits, which were close enough for the orbiter to appear as a fuzzy speck.
In this first photo, Danuri appears as a dark spot centered in the bottom third. The lunar orbiter is a bit smudged, so you really need to squint to find it. At the time the photo was taken, Danuri was orbiting 5 miles (8 kilometers) below LRO’s orbit, while LRO was around 50 miles, (80 kilometers) above the Moon’s surface, according to NASA.
For perspective, this image covers an area that’s about 2 miles (3 kilometers) wide.
As they zipped past each other, the relative velocities between the two spacecraft was at about 7,200 miles (11,500 kilometers) per hour. Due to the fast travel velocities, Danuri appears squished in the photos.
Despite LRO’s camera exposure time being a mere 0.338 milliseconds, the Danuri spacecraft was still stretched to about 10 times its size, smeared across the frame in the opposite direction of where it’s headed.
In this image, LRO got a little bit closer to Danuri at a distance of about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) from the spacecraft, and oriented at 25 degrees toward it.
The Danuri orbiter can be seen here in the highlighted white box. For perspective, the large, bowl-shaped crater in the upper left side of the image is 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) wide.
This isn’t the first time the pair of lunar orbiters have had a celestial photoshoot. About a year ago, Danuri captured a fuzzy image of LRO as it orbited the Moon above the NASA spacecraft. Now, LRO has returned the favor by capturing the slimming photos of Danuri.
LRO is the Moon’s local paparazzi, capturing photos of lunar missions such as India’s Chandrayaan-3, and others that weren’t as successful like Russia’s Luna 25 lander and Japan’s Hakuto-R M1 lander.