Homegrown space rocket blasts off
South Korea launched its first domestically developed space rocket yesterday, television pictures showed, the country’s second attempt after a launch last October failed.
The Korea Satellite Launch Vehicle II, a 200-tonne liquid fuel rocket informally called Nuri, lifted off from the launch site in Goheung at 4pm local time, with a commentator saying: “it seems it’s going according to the plan”.
South Korea’s second test launch of a homegrown space rocket comes eight months after the first test failed to put a dummy satellite into orbit, a setback in the country’s attempt to join the ranks of advanced spacefaring nations.
All three stages of the rocket worked in the first test last October, with the vehicle reaching an altitude of 700 kilometres, and the 1.5-tonne payload separating successfully. But it failed to put a dummy satellite into orbit after the third-stage engine stopped burning earlier than scheduled.
“Nuri separates dummy satellite,” South Korea’s YTN Television reported minutes after lift-off, adding shortly after that the launch “appears to be a success”.
In yesterday’s test, in addition to the dummy satellite, Nuri carried a rocket performance verification satellite and four cube satellites developed by four local universities for research purposes.
The three-stage Nuri rocket has been a decade in development at a cost of 2 trillion won (53 billion baht).
In Asia, China, Japan and India all have advanced space programmes, and the South’s nuclear-armed neighbour North Korea was the most recent entrant to the club of countries with their own satellite launch capability.