Another country joins moon race — Analysis

South Korea’s first lunar mission has begun. It launched a spacecraft to explore the surface of the Moon and gather valuable data from low orbit.

The ‘Danuri’ orbiter successfully launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Thursday night, traveling atop a Falcon 9 rocket produced by American firm SpaceX. After around 40 minutes, the craft separated from the rocket’s second stage and began its trip to the moon in earnest, a journey expected to take several months.

Using a roundabout course designed to conserve fuel, the Danuri will reach the moon’s orbit in December, where it will join other spacecraft operated by the United States and India, as well as a Chinese lunar rover charting the moon’s far side.

The South Korean craft will gather information about the moon’s surface and magnetic field, aiming to maintain a low polar orbit of just 62 miles (100 kilometers). It’s hoped that the data-collection process will last at most a year.   

Seoul is pushing ahead with multiple space missions, successfully placing satellites in orbit using its rocket in June after a failure last year. In May, meanwhile, it joined a collective of agencies led by NASA aiming to again send astronauts to the moon’s surface at some point in the coming years, and South Korea is already discussing plans for a robotic probe mission by 2030.