India’s Chandrayaan-2 moon orbiter maneuvered in September to keep away from an in depth strategy with South Korea’s Danuri spacecraft, in response to a latest report from the Indian House Analysis Organisation (ISRO).
The report mentioned the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter raised its orbit on Sept. 19 to forestall an in depth strategy to Danuri, which was anticipated to happen two weeks later if Chandrayaan-2’s trajectory went unchanged. The report famous {that a} subsequent maneuver, which befell on Oct. 1, additionally helped Chandrayaan-2 keep away from potential collisions with different orbiters round the moon, together with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
Such collision-avoidance maneuvers will not be unusual across the moon. Chandrayaan-2, Danuri and LRO all share an almost polar orbit, so the spacecraft come shut to 1 one other over the lunar poles, the place the chance of collision could be very excessive. Within the final yr and a half alone, the Korea Aerospace Analysis Institute (KARI), which operates Danuri, obtained 40 “crimson alarms” of potential collisions amongst LRO, Chandrayaan-2 and Danuri.
In 2021, Chandrayaan-2 shifted its orbit to keep away from a predicted shut strategy to LRO over the moon’s north pole. With out the maneuver, the 2 spacecraft would have crossed by each other at only one.8 miles (3 kilometers) aside, ISRO mentioned.
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Danuri itself maneuvered at the very least thrice because it entered lunar orbit in December 2022 — as soon as to avoid LRO, and one other to keep away from Chandrayaan-2 and to evade Japan’s Good Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) spacecraft shortly earlier than the latter’s landing on the moon’s close to aspect in January, SpaceNews reported.
There’s at present no worldwide protocol to resolve collision dangers. The three house businesses — NASA, KARI and ISRO — voluntarily share knowledge by e mail exchanges and teleconferences concerning the trajectories of their spacecraft.
“Typically, we didn’t have the contact data of the accountable personnel, and community safety points sometimes prevented e mail exchanges,” in response to a presentation by the Korea AeroSpace Administration on the UN committee assembly held in June. “Nonetheless, we in the end resolved all collision dangers by collaborative discussions.”
The house businesses primarily use a platform constructed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory known as MADCAP that calculates danger of collisions and generates warnings.
Nonetheless, “proper now, there isn’t any mutually agreed-upon worldwide session mechanism or protocol to resolve such collision dangers,” Soyoung Chung, a senior researcher at KARI’s technique and planning directorate, mentioned at an area sustainability summit earlier this yr, in response to SpaceNews.
“With our expertise of working KPLO [Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, officially Danuri], we understand there’s a want for an information-sharing platform and mutually agreed-upon worldwide protocols to establish and handle the chance of collisions between the missions across the moon similar to we do on the Earth.”
