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NASA ’s lunar orbiter has captured picture of a surfboard - form physical object zooming past themoon .
The close encounter was n’t aUFOor analien megastructure . Rather , NASA ’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter ( LRO ) spotted South Korea’slunar artificial satellite Danurizipping by as the two spacecraft circled the moon , NASA officials said in astatement .
Korea’s lunar orbiter Danuri as it travels past the surface of the moon.
Because the two spacecraft were " traveling in nearly parallel orbits , " the LRO procedure squad at NASA ’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland take the opportunity to snap photos of the upshot , which unfolded between March 5 and 6 .
LRO ’s photographic camera has a very brusque vulnerability sentence of about 0.338 msec , make the event difficult to capture . However , it still cope to get photos of Danuri , the first Korean spacecraft to accede lunar orbit , which it achieved in December 2022 .
However , because of the speed remainder between the two spacecraft — just about 7,200 mph ( 11,500 km / h ) — the result image makes Danuri appear to be " smirch to 10 prison term its sizing . " This stretching effect causes it to resemble a flat surfboard .
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In reality , Danuri looks nothing like a surfboard ; it ’s a box - shaped spacecraft with two solar panel attached to each side .
Paul Byrne , an associate professor of planetary science at Washington University in St. Louis , shared some of the trope on X(formerly Twitter ) .
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" To be vindicated , the Danuri orbiter is not a weirdly thin load of pixels — it ’s a fairly normal - front satellite , " Byrne posted . " But the rattling speeds involve mean that it ’s smeared on the LRO ’s camera demodulator . "
It did n’t take long for people to remark on how the orbiter appear spookily familiar to Silver Surfer , a fabricated humanoid alien in the Marvel Universe , accord toNDTV , an India - based news release .
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