‘Surfboard UFO’ flying past the moon leaves stargazers baffled – but Nasa has a simple explanation

NASA has discovered the source of the mysterious surfboard-shaped ‘UFO’ that was captured whizzing past the moon.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) photographed the bizarre object, which some believed to be an alien spacecraft or some kind of extraterrestrial megastructure.

NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University

Image captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on March 5 and 6[/caption]

Images of the object were captured on two separate occasions, on March 5 and March 6.

But Nasa has gone ahead and burst all hopes of a possible close encounter.

The LRO operations team at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre have revealed that the mysterious object captured was actually South Korea’s lunar orbiter Danuri.

“The two spacecraft, traveling in nearly parallel orbits, zipped past each other in opposite directions between March 5 and 6, 2024,” the team wrote in a blog post.

Hawkish space fans will know that what is pictured, doesn’t quite resemble Danuri.

And Nasa has a good explanation for that, too.

The South Korean orbiter has been smeared to around 10 times its actual size in the photos due to high travel velocities between the two spacecraft.

The speed difference between the pair is roughly 7,200 mph (11,500 km/h).

So Danuri’s appearance has been stretched to a point where it now resembles a surfboard.

What Danuri actually looks like is a box with two winged solar panels with an aerial on top.

The South Korean spacecraft is the country’s first to travel beyond Earth’s orbit.

It reached orbit in December 2022 to pave the way for South Korean astronauts to visit the lunar surface in the coming decades alongside Nasa.

Boots on the Moon

Nasa is currently targeting September 2026 for its Artemis III mission, the first human assignment on the Moon since Apollo 17.

While Nasa’s Artemis programme brings the White House several steps closer to securing a permanent base on the Moon, it may not be alone on the lunar surface.

Like the US, China has its own plans for a lunar research facility, which it has already agreed to share with Egypt, Venezuela, South Africa, Pakistan and Azerbaijan.

While Nasa boss Bill Nelson once considered China its most capable opponent in getting boots on the Moon by the end of the decade – he has since changed his outlook.

As things stand today, China is aiming to establish its Disneyland-sized International Lunar Research Base (ILRS) no earlier than 2028.

China is adamant that its intentions for ILRS are to collect samples and carry out “scientific exploration”.