North Korea’s first spy satellite is ‘alive’ and can manoeuvre, expert says

North Korea’s first spy satellite is “alive”, a Netherlands-based space expert said on Tuesday, after detecting changes in its orbit that suggested Pyongyang was successfully controlling the spacecraft — although its capabilities remain unknown.

After two fiery failures, North Korea placed the Malligyong-1 satellite in orbit in November.

Pyongyang’s state media claimed it has photographed sensitive military and political sites in South Korea, the US and elsewhere, but has not released any imagery. Independent radio trackers have not detected signals from the satellite.

“But now we can definitely say the satellite is alive,” Marco Langbroek, a satellite expert at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, wrote in a blog post.

From February 19-24, the satellite conducted manoeuvres to raise its perigee, or the lowest point in its orbit, from 488km to 497km, Langbroek said, citing data from the Us–led Combined Space Operations Center.

South Korea’s defence ministry said it too had assessed that the satellite was in orbit, but said it would not comment further on individual analyses.

On Monday, defence minister Shin Won-sik said the satellite was not showing any signs of performing other tasks or engaging in reconnaissance.

The orbit-raising manoeuvre was a surprise as the presence of an onboard propulsion system was unexpected.

Previous North Korean satellites never manoeuvred, Langbroek said.

That meant that as long as there was fuel in the satellite, North Korea could prolong the satellite’s lifetime by raising its altitude when it got too low because of orbital decay, he concluded.