Its construction is planned to be completed in October
SEOUL, August 30. /TASS/. The construction of the first South Korean lunar exploration spacecraft will be completed in October this year. This was announced on Monday by the Ministry of Science and Information and Communication Technologies of the country.
As noted in the press release, the launch is planned to be made in August next year. A high-precision camera developed by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will be installed on the orbiter. It will collect data on the surface of the Moon for a year to support the Artemis program, implemented under the leadership of the United States.
In the spring of 2019, NASA announced the project of the Artemis lunar program, which will consist of three stages. The first of them (Artemis 1) provides for an unmanned flight of the Orion spacecraft installed on the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket around the Moon and its return to Earth. The second stage (Artemis 2) is a flyby of a natural satellite of the Earth with a crew on board. At the third stage of the mission (Artemis 3), NASA expects to land astronauts on the Moon in 2024, and then send them to Mars approximately in the mid-2030s.
South Korea became the eleventh participant of the Artemis program, having signed the corresponding agreement in May 2021.