SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea successfully launched its largest satellite to date on its domestically developed Nuri rocket early Thursday, marking the fourth of six planned launches through 2027.
The three-stage Nuri rocket lifted off from the country’s spaceport on an island off Goheung, a southwestern coastal county. Aerospace officials said the launch placed a 516-kilogram science satellite and 12 microsatellites into a target orbit approximately 600 kilometers above Earth.
The Korea Aerospace Administration reported that the main satellite made contact with a South Korean ground station in Antarctica about 40 minutes after liftoff at 1:55 a.m., confirming it was operating normally, including the deployment of its solar panels. The 12 smaller microsatellites will sequentially contact ground stations according to their communication schedules.
Science Minister Kyunghoon Bae hailed the launch as a success, emphasizing that South Korea now has independent space launch and transport capability. He called the mission a turning point for the country’s space industry, noting it was the first time a private company, Hanwha Aerospace, assembled the rocket under technology transfer from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute.
“Building on today’s success, we will steadfastly pursue the development of next-generation launch vehicles, lunar exploration, and deep-space missions,” Bae said.
The main satellite is equipped with a wide-range airglow camera to observe auroral activity, along with instruments for measuring plasma and magnetic fields and testing life-science experiments in space.
The 12 smaller “cube” satellites, developed by university teams and research institutions, include GPS systems to study Earth’s atmosphere, infrared cameras to track plastic in the oceans, and systems to test solar cells and communication equipment.
Thursday’s launch is the first involving a Nuri rocket since May 2023, when the rocket successfully placed a 180-kilogram observation satellite into orbit. It is also the fourth Nuri launch overall since its initial attempt in October 2021, which failed to deliver a test payload.
Further launches are planned for 2026 and 2027 as part of a multiyear program aimed at advancing South Korea’s space technologies and reducing the gap with leading Asian space powers such as China, Japan, and India.
The Nuri rocket is a three-stage vehicle powered by five 75-ton-class engines in its first and second stages and a seven-ton-class engine in its third stage, which deploys the payloads at the designated altitude. It is the first South Korean launch vehicle built primarily with domestic technology, a milestone for a nation that had relied on foreign launches since the 1990s.
South Korea’s Naro Space Center, the country’s only spaceport, first achieved a successful launch in 2013 with a two-stage rocket built with Russian technology, following years of delays and failures. Earlier test rockets in 2009 and 2010 reached target altitude but either failed to deploy satellites or exploded shortly after liftoff.
Edgardo Hernal started college at UP Diliman and received his BA in Economics from San Sebastian College, Manila, and Masters in Information Systems Management from Keller Graduate School of Management of DeVry University in Oak Brook, IL. He has 25 years of copy editing and management experience at Thomson West, a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters.
- EDGARDO HERNAL
- EDGARDO HERNAL
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- EDGARDO HERNAL
