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As part of our never-ending search for alien life (and, well, knowledge about space), NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has been orbiting the moon since it was launched on June 18, 2009.
According to NASA, “LRO’s primary goal was to make a 3D map of the moon’s surface from lunar polar orbit as part of a high-resolution mapping program to identify landing sites and potential resources, to investigate the radiation environment, and to prove new technologies in anticipation of future automated and human missions to the surface of the moon.”
Blah, blah, blah… what about aliens?
This week, a photo captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter caused a bit of a stir when it appeared that it had finally found one – one that looks suspiciously similar to Silver Surfer from Marvel Comics.
NASA reported that the mysterious object was photographed circling the moon between between March 5 and 6 from a distance of about 2-1/2 to 5 miles.
Sadly, the thin, sliver of an object turned out, at least according to NASA (who is always truthful), not to be an alien or a UFO, or even the cause of the big eclipse.
It was just the Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s Danuri lunar orbiter.
The LRO and Danuri were traveling in nearly parallel orbits with relative velocities between the two spacecraft of 7,200 miles per hour (or about 2 miles per second), which is why Danuri looks like Silver Surfer in the photo. Especially since, NASA reports, the LRO’s camera exposure time is only 0.338 milliseconds.
“To be clear, the Danuri orbiter is not a weirdly thin load of pixels—it’s a fairly normal-looking orbiter. But the terrific speeds involved mean that it’s smeared on the LRO’s camera detector,” Paul Byrne, an associate professor of earth, environmental and planetary science at St. Louis’ Washington University, wrote on X (Twitter).
Still, despite it not being something extraterrestrial, the shot is a once in a million photo due to high velocities of the two crafts and the short exposure time of the LRO’s camera.