ATTENTION DRAWN TO LUNAR ORBITER

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South Korea’s very first lunar probe named Danuri which means to “enjoy the moon and return” is set to lift off in about 60 days. The global scientific community is showing keen interest in Danuri, made with Korean technology.

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This is a special edition of Nature magazine highlighting lunar explorations. It says that this year, Japan, South Korea, Russia, India, the United Arab Emirates and the United States aim to all send missions to the Moon. And it goes on to introduce the Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter which says researchers are especially enthused about. The orbiter will carry six instruments, of which five are domestically built and operated. One of which is the PolCam, a polarization camera produced by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute. It’s expected to provide a detailed map of the lunar surface never seen before, using polarized light.

[Soundbite] Kim Dae-gwan(Lunar Mission Chief, Korea Aerospace Research Institute) : "It will be the first attempt at high resolution imagery using polarized light which has never been done for the moon’s back side because it’s not visible from Earth."

A gamma ray spectrometer, also locally developed, will help map out a distribution chart on elements such as titanium and helium-3, lunar resources that can be extracted in the future. Another device to test Internet access in space will attempt to send images from the moon in real-time.

[Soundbite] Kim Dae-gwan(Lunar Mission Chief, KARI) : "There will come a time when lunar base and people on Earth will have individual IP addresses to enable communication. The test will be used for that purpose."

The entire journey from the time the craft enters the lunar orbit and until it completes all its missions will be monitored by a control center at the Korea Aerospace Research Institute.

[Soundbite] Jo Yeong-ho(Lunar Probe Senior Researcher, KARI) : "We will issue 'commands' 6 hours before the missions kick off and the tasks will be automatically implemented."

Danuri will serve as a test bed to gauge Korea’s space exploration capacity, together with the homegrown Nuri launch scheduled to blast off on June 15. After final inspections, the orbiter will lift off from the U.S. state of Florida on August 3 at 8:20 am Korea time.