South Korea is joining the space race. The Asian country made history Thursday after successfully launching a commercial satellite using its rocket.
South Korea Launched Its Satellite Using Its Rocket
According to South Korea's science minister, the nation's homegrown space rocket, Nuri, successfully launched a commercial-grade satellite into orbit for the first time on Thursday, marking a significant step toward realizing its aspirations to compete with its Asian rivals in the space race, Reuters reported.
At 6:24 p.m., the Nuri rocket blasted off from the Naro Space Center on South Korea's southern coast. (0924 GMT) in its third flight after the launch was postponed due to technical issues the previous day.
As a follow-up to the second test, which successfully launched dummy satellites into orbit in June of last year, Thursday's flight was intended to load a commercial-grade satellite onto the rocket for the first time.
According to Science Minister Lee Jong-ho, the primary commercial-grade satellite, one of eight on board the rocket, successfully made contact with an Antarctic base station.
Six different cube satellites have also been launched. However, one more cube satellite is being examined to see if it was released normally.
According to President Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea is now among the top seven nations that have launched domestically produced satellites into orbit using space launch vehicles they created.
He added that this would significantly alter how the world perceives South Korea's advanced industry and space research technologies.
Network Glitch Before Successful Launch
On Wednesday, the three-stage vehicle was scheduled to fly. However, the ministry called it off just hours before the scheduled time due to technical problems. Officials described it as communication errors within the system that controls a helium tank on the launch pad.
According to The Register, a network error also delayed NASA's first Artemis mission. Fortunately, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) was able to fix the problem overnight.
What Is Nuri Space Rocket?
Nuri is the country's first domestically built space launch vehicle. Its name, "Nuri," means "world" in Korean. It's also the name of the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-II (KSLV-II) rocket. Nuri is a three-stage rocket developed to put satellites into a low orbit 600-800 kilometers above Earth, according to The Korea Times.
Nuri is 47.2 meters long and weighs 200 tons. It has a maximum diameter of 3.5 meters and uses four 75-ton liquid thrust engines in the first stage, another 75-ton liquid engine in the second stage, and a 7-ton liquid engine in the third stage.
It was first launched in October 2021 and delivered partial success. It successfully flew to its target altitude of 700 kilometers but failed to place the 1.5-ton dummy satellite into orbit. Its third-stage engine also burned earlier than expected. The rocket has come to its full potential.
Nuri is central to South Korea's ambitious plans to jumpstart its space program and boost progress in 6G networks, spy satellites, and even lunar probes. It is set to make three more missions by 2027.
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