Picture of the launch, from Yonhap.
After seven delays, South Korea successfully launched the first rocket from Korean soil Tuesday from the Naro Space Center in Jeollanam-do's Goheung county. "Korea's first rocket lifts off from space center," says a Korea Herald headline, and "Korea launches 1st rocket into space successfully" says another; an excerpt:
South Korea's first space rocket has successfully entered the Earth's orbit and deployed its 100kg scientific satellite, the government said on Tuesday, according to Yonhap News. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) said the locally made scientific satellite separated from the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 (KSLV-1) 540 seconds after launch and over 2,000km from the Naro Space Center, located 485km south of Seoul.
The successful launch comes after Seoul postponed the date seven times since 2005 due to diplomatic and technical issues and complications in the construction of launch facilities. The latest delay occurred Wednesday, when mission controllers halted the countdown with less than eight minutes remaining before blastoff.
The government said it will take about 11-13 hours before communications between the scientific satellite and ground controllers can take place. Communications with the satellite will determine if the liftoff was a total success, although engineers claimed inability to make contact on the first attempt does not signify a failure.
South Korea spent 502.5 billion won ($402.4 million) on the 140-ton KSLV-1, which stands 33m tall and has a diameter of 2.9m.
However, the Korea Times headline says "S. Korea Fails to Put Satellite Into Target Orbit."
South Korea's first space rocket successfully lifted off from the country's launch pad on the southern coast Tuesday but failed to put a scientific satellite into the target orbit, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said.
The rocket, called the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 (KSLV-1), soared into the sky at 5 p.m. from the Naro Space Center and had to separate from a scientific satellite at an altitude of 306 km. Instead, the rocket separated at an altitude of 340 km.
It means that the rocket launch has been a partial failure, researchers said.
That article reiterates first contact with the satellite will come 11 to 13 hours later, some time Wednesday morning, Seoul time.
KBS has kept it short and sweet so far, simply writing
South Korea has successfully launched its first space rocket, the "Naro."
The few other English-language news sources haven't yet updated their pages with the latest news, some five hours after the launch. They will no doubt be filled with columns of lofty prose marking the occassion and South Korea's entry into the select company of rocket-launching
You'll find a collection of photographs on Chosun.com---those who can navigate Korean sites will find them anywhere---and you can watch a video of the launch from, among other places, YTN. The original point of this post was to give a little overview of what the local English-language papers were writing, but then I noticed today that when you search through the hundreds of articles Google News you can organize results by "local sources," thus defeating the purpose of me going through and doing it.
The launch has been delayed a bunch of times, most recently on the 19th, Korea time, when the launch was stopped 7 minutes 56 seconds prior to liftoff due to what was called a technical glitch. The rocket's name, Naro, refers to the space center where it was launched, and was a name chosen after a public naming competition. Personally I thought some of my suggestions were more typical of Korean efforts in English, but I forgot to submit something. Though it was launched from the Naro Space Center, the rocket was built with the help of the Russians. South Korea plans to build one of its own by 2017.
2 comments:
That's one small step for ajossi... Congratulations to all involved. Hope the ROK space program helps highlight the difference between the peaceful democratic South and the malevolent Nork regime.
This difficulties are relatively picayune compared to the disasters many national space programs have experienced in those initial efforts. It would be hubristic of the ROK program not to acknowledge this. As a matter of fact calamity seems to go with success in this business.
And, speaking of business, I'm a bit diappointed that the South Koreans didn't go farther beyond the current liquid and solid fuel technology regime - indeed didn't use indigenous technology - or challenge the government-funded model. I think this modest success is akin to reverse-engineering a toaster with people's taxes and on the first morning burning a million dollar slab of bread..
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