On March 5, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which is orbiting the moon, used a narrow-angle camera to capture a very strange and mysterious object, which is also located in lunar orbit, not far from the LRO, just like the double-edged lightsaber in "Star Wars", but only a section on both sides near the hilt seems to glow white, but the blade is black.
Netizens are also discussing, since it appeared in the orbit of the moon, it is so elongated, and the two sides are almost symmetrical, it is obvious that it cannot be an asteroid, but more likely to be some kind of object of human origin.
You've probably had a flash in your mind: an alien spaceship? Unfortunately, it's a real artifact, and scientists have worked so hard to photograph it.
The object is South Korea's first lunar probe, the Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), also known as "Danali" or Moon Gazer, which was launched by Elon Musk's SpaceX's Falcon 9 in August 2022 and arrived in lunar orbit in December, with the main mission of exploring lunar resources and mapping terrain in search of future landing sites.
But how can a satellite be so elongated?
Between March 5 and 6, Denalee and LRO flew in opposite directions along nearly parallel orbits about 80 km from the lunar surface, with extremely high relative speeds of about 7,200 mph or 1,500 km/h (suspected NASA clerical error, possibly 11,600 km/h/ hours), a second staggered is 3.2 km, and the LRO has an exposure time of only 0.338 milliseconds, so in order to take a picture of Denale, you have to do fine calculations and extremely precise operations.
NASA took a total of 6 photographs, and the title image was taken when the two were closest to each other, when Denalee was only about 4 kilometers below the LRO, and due to the relative speed, Denale's image was stretched about 10 times, forming this unique "lightsaber" shape. This is similar to when you take a picture of a moving object, the object will be elongated and leave a blurry moving image.
Interestingly, Denarie has six scientific instruments installed on it, one of which is NASA's, and it is also a narrow-angle camera, and it is an improved version of the narrow-angle camera on the LRO, with a 200-fold increase in sensitivity, mainly used to find water ice in permanently shadowed areas of the moon's poles. It's this camera, and I've taken an image of LRO before, so I can say it's a pity, but it's blurry because it's far away.