Tag: Nuri rocket

Congratulations to South Korea for the successful launch of their Nuri rocket:

Flight trajectory of Nuri

South Korea on Thursday successfully launched its homegrown space rocket Nuri to put eight practical satellites into orbit, achieving another milestone for the country’s space program.

The 200-ton Nuri, also known as KSLV-II, blasted off from Naro Space Center in the country’s southern coastal village of Goheung at 6:24 p.m., and successfully completed its flight sequence, according to the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI).

“Following the success of the second launch of Nuri last year and the third launch today, we have confirmed the flight performance of Nuri, not only confirming the reliability of Nuri, but also confirming our potential for launch services for various satellite operations and space exploration,” Science Minister Lee Jong-ho said in a briefing.

He also said that the main satellite, NEXTSAT-2, has made its first communication with Korea’s King Sejong Station in Antarctica.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but this successful launch will put further pressure on North Korea’s scientists to try and match this performance with their upcoming space launch.

With North Korea preparing their own rocket launch it would be embarrassing for the ROK if this launch fails. So it is best to not take any chances and double check everything before launch:

South Korea decided Wednesday to postpone the launch of its space rocket Nuri due to a technical glitch found during final preparations, the science ministry said.

“While controlling a helium valve, aerospace engineers found a communications problem between a launch control computer and a launch pad facility control computer,” Vice Science Minister Oh Tae-seog said in a briefing at the Naro Space Center in Goheung. “The valve is OK, but the system might matter when it goes into the automatic operation system. So we inevitably canceled the scheduled launch.”

The engineers detected the problem at around 3:30 p.m., just before they were to start injecting fuel and oxidizer into the rocket.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but ROK officials are still determining if they will be able to launch the rocket with its 8 satellite payload either today or later in the week.