ANU astrophysicist and cosmologist Dr Brad Tucker says South Korea has launched its first mission to the moon.
“South Korea has had a space program for a long time; the two things they really haven’t done a lot of are their own rockets to take things into space and activity around the moon like lots of people are doing,” he told Sky News Australia.
“Their orbiter went on a SpaceX rocket to the moon, so the idea of this is for the orbiter to go around the moon, do a number of scientific and research experiments and also … test the technology.”
Dr Tucker said what South Korea wanted to do was land a rover and probe on the moon’s surface by the end of the decade.
“So this is where we’re seeing space happen, so many new countries are coming onto kind of the moon scene, so to speak,” he said.
“Yes, the US is leading a big group which Australia is a part of, and we see obviously activity from Russia and China, India’s landed on the moon, Israel’s landed a private probe on the moon a few years ago.
“We’re seeing lots of new countries enter the moon race.”
