SEOUL: South Korea is preparing to launch its homegrown space rocket Nuri in a mission to put eight satellites into orbit.
The 200-tonne Nuri is set to blast off from the Naro Space Centre in the country’s southern coastal village of Goheung, according to the Science and ICT Ministry and the South Korea Aerospace Research Institute (Kari).
In a meeting of Nuri’s launch management committee on Tuesday, the science ministry and Kari concluded Nuri’s final technical inspection proceeded without any problems.
A successful launch would verify South Korea’s capability to operate a space vehicle to carry payload satellites into target orbit.
This time, Nuri, also known as KSLV-II, is loaded with eight practical satellites that have their own respective missions in space, while a dummy satellite and a performance verification satellite to test the rocket’s capabilities were onboard Nuri in its previous flight.
They are the country’s second next-generation small satellites, the NEXTSAT-2, four microsatellites developed by the South Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, codenamed Snipe, the JAC by South Korean engineering company Justek Inc, the LUMIR-T1 by local space firm Lumir Inc and the KSAT3U by startup Kairospace Co.
As Nuri finished its flight sequences and sent the dummy satellite into its target orbit as planned, South Korea became the seventh country in the world to have developed a space launch vehicle that can carry a more than one-tonne satellite, after Russia, the United States, France, China, Japan and India.
The country has secured the key independent technology for developing and launching space rockets carrying homegrown satellites, opening up a new development era in the country’s space programme.
The two trillion won (US$1.52bil or RM6.9bil) Nuri project began in 2010 and continued until 2027, with three additional rocket launches. — The Korea Herald/ANN