{"id":155076,"date":"2025-11-27T04:40:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T04:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/155076\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T04:40:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T04:40:07","slug":"south-koreas-largest-satellite-launched-on-nuri-rocket-in-ambitious-space-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/155076\/","title":{"rendered":"South Korea’s largest satellite launched on Nuri rocket in ambitious space mission"},"content":{"rendered":"

SEOUL, South Korea — SEOUL, South Korea (AP) \u2014 South Korea<\/a> launched its largest satellite yet on its nationally developed space rocket early Thursday in the fourth of six launches planned through 2027.<\/p>\n

The three-stage Nuri rocket lifted off from a spaceport on an island off the southwestern coastal county of Goheung. Aerospace officials said the rocket placed a 516-kilogram (1,137-pound) science satellite and 12 microsatellites into a target orbit about 600 kilometers (372 miles) above Earth.<\/p>\n

The Korea Aerospace Administration said the main satellite made contact with a South Korean ground station in Antarctica about 40 minutes after liftoff at 1:55 a.m., confirming normal function and deployment of its solar panels. The satellite later established links with ground stations in South Korea\u2019s central Daejeon city and Svalbard, Norway, as well as further contact with the King Sejong Station in Antarctica.<\/p>\n

Five of the 12 microsatellites had contacted ground stations as of Thursday afternoon, and the rest were expected to do so in a scheduled sequence.<\/p>\n

Kyunghoon Bae, the country\u2019s science minister, said the successful launch reaffirmed that South Korea had independent space launch and transport capability. <\/p>\n

He said the launch was a turning point as the first time a private company, Hanwha Aerospace, assembled the rocket under a technology transfer from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, the national space agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuilding on today\u2019s success, we will steadfastly pursue the development of next-generation launch vehicles, lunar exploration and deep-space missions,\u201d Bae said. <\/p>\n

The main satellite launched Thursday is equipped with a wide-range airglow camera to observe auroral activity and separate systems for measuring plasma and magnetic fields and for testing how life-science experiments perform in space.<\/p>\n

The dozen smaller \u201ccube\u201d satellites, developed by university teams and research institutions, include GPS systems to study Earth\u2019s atmosphere, infrared cameras to track plastic in the oceans, and systems for testing solar cells or communication equipment.<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s event was the country\u2019s first launch involving a Nuri rocket since May 2023,<\/a> when it successfully placed a 180-kilogram (397-pound) observation satellite into orbit, and the fourth overall since its first attempt in October 2021,<\/a> which failed to deliver a dummy device.<\/p>\n

Further launches are planned in 2026 and 2027 to advance the country\u2019s space technologies and industries, and to reduce the gap with leading Asian space powers, such as China, Japan and India.<\/p>\n

Nuri is a three-stage rocket powered by five 75-ton-class engines in its first and second stages and a 7-ton-class engine in its third stage, which releases the payloads at the desired altitude. It\u2019s the country\u2019s first space launch vehicle built primarily with domestic technology, a core asset for a nation that had largely relied on other countries to launch its satellites since the 1990s.<\/p>\n

The Naro Space Center, South Korea\u2019s lone spaceport, saw its first successful launch in 2013 with a two-stage rocket built with Russian technology, following years of delays and repeated failures. The rocket reached its target altitude during its first test in 2009 but failed to deploy a satellite, and then exploded shortly after liftoff during its second test in 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEOUL, South Korea — SEOUL, South Korea (AP) \u2014 South Korea launched its largest satellite yet on its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[93927,7265,127,122,85,46,141,145,30641,125,126],"class_list":{"0":"post-155076","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-93927","9":"tag-aerospace-and-defense-industry","10":"tag-article","11":"tag-general-news","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-space","16":"tag-space-launches","17":"tag-technology","18":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}