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South Korea’s first lunar mission has provided a stunning first image from a camera designed to scan permanently shadowed areas near the lunar poles.
The NASA-funded ShadowCam is designed to reveal regions where the sun never shines on the moon to aid future exploration efforts and has now demonstrated an unprecedented glimpse of Shackleton Crater at the moon’s south pole. .
ShadowCam works on board Danuri, also known as Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO). It is one of six science payloads aboard Danuri, which was launched in August 2022 and arrived in lunar orbit in mid-December. The Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) has already published Danuri’s project first pictures from lunar orbit, and now ShadowCam is showing its capabilities with an incredible test image of a permanently shadowed region in Shackleton Crater.
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The top fifth of the image shows the base of Shackleton’s steep crater wall, with the lower portions showing the crater floor. At the top, you can see the trace of a rock about 16 feet (5 meters) in diameter that has rolled down the wall of the crater.
“ShadowCam reveals the interior but not the rim because the detector is so sensitive that it saturates whenever it looks at terrain directly lit by sunlight,” said Mark Robinson of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University in the release.
ShadowCam relies on NASA onboard cameras Lunar reconnaissance orbiter which has been running since 2009, but offers unprecedented views of permanently shaded regions, or PSRs.
The moon, unlike the Earth, has only a slight axial tilt, which means that certain areas never receive direct sunlight. ShadowCam’s high sensitivity means it can detect faintly reflected light from nearby items and provide never-before-seen views in perpetually dark areas.
The camera will be used to image permanently shadowed regions of the moon with a resolution greater than 6.6 feet (2 meters) per pixel and will provide mapping for use by future surface missions such as those from NASA. VIPER to search for volatiles, elements or substances with a low boiling point such as water, hydrogen or helium.
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