Space-born landmarks

It might get crowded up there

More than 70 nations on Earth operate space programs, but not all have been to outer space. South Korea has become the eighth nation to send a probe to the moon, and the new images it sent back are striking. That country joins the United States, Russia, Red China, the European Space Agency, Italy, India and Japan in this exclusive club. The former three remain the only nations to achieve human spaceflight and the U.S., of course, is the only one to land people on the lunar surface.

The Chinese intend to alter that distinction before long.

Meanwhile, the South Koreans launched the $180 million Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in August. It arrived in mid-December, and the first images from its low lunar orbit arrived this week. The images will help the Koreans, who recently joined NASA’s moon-exploration coalition, scout a landing spot for a robotic lunar landing mission planned for 2032.

The mission of the coalition is to establish a plan for the responsible exploration of the moon. (Reports lag, unsurprisingly, on China’s participation.)

The KPLO launch marked the 61st orbital mission of the year for SpaceX, which almost doubles its previous single-year mark of 31 set in 2021. The company tweeted that it averaged a launch every six days from its three launch sites in 2022.

Most of them were related to building StarLink, the firm’s massive constellation of Internet satellites. SpaceX also launched four missions to the International Space Station (soon to have a Chinese neighbor, by the way). Two of those were piloted by astronauts and the remaining pair were robotic cargo missions.

Cheers to the Koreans and SpaceX for such significant milestones. To borrow a phrase from pop culture, this space thing is getting real, y’all.