The country is the seventh nation capable of launching practical satellites:
South Korea successfully launched and put its homegrown space rocket into orbit Tuesday, becoming the seventh nation capable of launching practical satellites using a self-developed propulsion system.
"The Nuri rocket launch was a success," Lee Sang-ryul, director of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute told the press after the launch. "After the launch, Nuri's flight process proceeded according to the planned flight sequence."
KARI set off its 200-ton homegrown space rocket from the Naro Space Center in the Southern coastal village of Goheung. The launch was delayed from the original test date last Thursday due to weather conditions and a technical glitch.
Loaded with a 162.5-kilogram (358-pound) performance-verification satellite -- as well as four cube satellites for academic research and a 1.3-ton dummy satellite -- Nuri reached its target orbit of 700 kilometers (435 miles) above the Earth. All three stages of its engine were combusted according to plan, separating the mounted satellites at the arranged moment.
[...] "The Nuri spacecraft is fired up by not just one engine but a clustering of four 75-ton grade liquid engines. This gives potential to build larger projectiles with more engines in the future," Cho said.
[...] "We have set the stage for us to travel to space whenever we'd like, without having to rent a launchpad or a projectile from another country," Minister of Science and ICT Lee Jong Ho said. "The South Korean government plans to enhance the technical reliability of the Nuri rocket through four additional launches until 2027."
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2022, @10:28PM (5 children)
Only rockets built in glorious North Korea are capable of flying high enough to reach heaven.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 25 2022, @12:25AM (3 children)
You do not mock the best korea's Marshall Kim, you just don't.
Thoughts and prayers for you and your family.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 25 2022, @12:46AM (1 child)
Nah, we're small fry. Kim will have his goons going after the guy that called him rocketman.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Saturday June 25 2022, @06:41PM
I thought Kim was Trump's buddy.
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 25 2022, @03:26AM
We're Number Un! We're Number Un!
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday June 25 2022, @11:03AM
I think South Korea's ambition merely is to reach space. But I see why North Korea would aim to reach heaven by technological means, given that they surely won't reach it in afterlife. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 25 2022, @05:27AM (4 children)
I guess since S. Korea is under American protection, they don't need their own missiles (yet)? Maybe this homegrown rocket could be developed over time into an indigenous missile as insurance against a recently unreliable Uncle Sam.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday June 25 2022, @07:53AM
A rocket is a missile. And one that can put a satellite in orbit can hit anywhere on the planet.
No development necessary (except maybe the payload).
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Saturday June 25 2022, @11:01AM (1 child)
Just come out and say it, it was a Hyundai H100, not a "1.3-ton dummy satellite". It's now orbiting in the vicinity of Musk's Tesla.
Next year, Russia will be putting a VAZ-2101 into orbit just to prove they can do it too.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 25 2022, @12:52PM
Next year, Russia will be putting a VAZ-2101 into orbit just to prove they can do it too.
I didn't know Ukrainian tractors had launch capabilities or are they just going to use a Russian turret?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday June 25 2022, @11:02AM
If I were the South Korean leadership, I'd definitely consider this tech as officially "Oh, yeah, we can totally use it to launch satellites, and not blow up Pyongyang if we ever found ourselves needing to." Although I'm pretty sure the tech level required to hit Pyongyang from the south isn't all that difficult, given that it's only about 80 miles from the DMZ.
What's probably stopping that from flaring up, though, is in part the ease with which Team Juche could hit Seoul, because that's even closer to the border.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Sunday June 26 2022, @09:56PM
This is not an ICBM, unlike Japan's M-V and Epsilon. This one is three-stage, cryogenic fueled. Not what you start off with today, when you want to lob nukes.