SpaceX rocket is being prepared for flight this week to deliver a Korean expedition to the moon.
South Korea and SpaceX are preparing to launch a spacecraft this week on a long voyage that will eventually take it around the moon.
The Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter is set to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on the back of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Tuesday night.
After breaking free of Earth’s gravity, the KPLO is scheduled to enter a low-altitude orbit around the moon. Fueling and testing have been completed by South Korean engineers who went to the United States for the flight.
According to Space.org, Eunhyeuk Kim, a KPLO project scientist at the Korean Aerospace Research Institute, stated, “We hope to build key technologies for both space exploration and scientific study.”
The launch is slated for Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. EDT.
The KPLO will eventually enter a polar orbit 62 miles above the lunar surface and conduct observations for at least a year.
The project’s main goals are to detect the magnetic force above the lunar surface and to look into lunar resources such water ice, uranium, helium-3, silicon, and aluminium.
The $180 million mission will follow NASA’s CAPSTONE spacecraft, which launched last month, on a low-energy, fuel-efficient lunar course.
The expedition will also produce a topographic map, which will aid scientists on Earth in selecting future moon landing locations. NASA’s Artemis programme hopes to return humans to the moon’s surface by 2024.
The KPLO mission is the first phase in South Korea’s ambitious lunar exploration programme, which aims to deploy a robotic lander on the moon by 2030. In addition, the nation is preparing an asteroid sample-return mission.