At the moment, There are about 200 artificial objects in orbit around the Moonincluding active spaceshipssatellites and space debris. Most of these objects are in low orbits, at altitudes between 100 and 2,000 kilometers.
So, overall, the chance of two lunar spacecraft meeting is low, but not zero. Not only that, as the number of spacecraft in lunar orbit increases, so will the probability of collisions.
Still, this rare event occurred. He Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) NASA captured a series of images of the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO)also known as Danuri, with the background of lunar craters.
Did it come across in the photo?
The two spacecraft crossed paths between March 5 and 6, traveling in nearly parallel orbits around the Moon. The LRO's narrow-angle camera took a series of photographs of Danuri during three orbits, when the spacecraft were close enough for the Korean orbiter to appear as a blurry speck.
In the first image, Danuri appears as a dark spot in the lower third. The lunar orbiter is a little blurry, so you need to sharpen your eyes to find it.
At the time the photo was taken, Danuri was orbiting 8 kilometers below the LRO's orbit, while the LRO was about 80 kilometers above the Moon's surface, according to NASA. In perspective, this image covers an area approximately 3 kilometers wide.
As the spacecraft quickly passed each other, their relative speeds were about 11,500 kilometers per hour. Due to these speeds, Danuri appears crushed in the photos.
Although the LRO's camera exposure time was only 0.338 milliseconds, the Danuri spacecraft still stretched to about 10 times its size, smearing the frame in the opposite direction to its direction of motion.
In the second image, the LRO moved a little closer to Danuri, about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) away from the spacecraft and oriented 25 degrees toward it. The Danuri orbiter can be seen in the white highlighted box.
For perspective, the large bowl-shaped crater at the top left of the image is 12 kilometers wide.
This isn't the first time the two lunar spacecraft have had a celestial photo shoot. About a year ago, Danuri captured a blurry image of the LRO as it orbited the Moon atop NASA's spacecraft. Now, the LRO has returned the favor by capturing Danuri's photos.
The LRO is the local paparazzi of the Mooncapturing photographs from lunar missions such as India's Chandrayaan-3, and others that were not as successful as Russia's Luna 25 lander and the Japanese Hakuto-R M1 lander.