SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea successfully launched its first own space rocket on Tuesday, officials said, a triumph that spurred the country’s growing space ambitions but also proved it has key technologies to build a space-based surveillance system and larger rockets amidst of hostilities with rival North Korea.
The three-stage Nuri rocket managed to release its working “performance verification” satellite after its launch from South Korea’s Space Launch Center at 4 p.m. and place it at an altitude of 700 kilometers (435 miles), the science ministry said.
“Dear fellow citizens, the Republic of Korea space is fully open. Science and technology in the Republic of Korea has made great strides,” Science Minister Lee Jong-Ho said at a televised news conference. “The government will continue its bold march towards a space power with the people.”
Earlier live TV footage showed the 47-meter rocket, decorated with a national flag and its official name in Korean, rising into the air amid bright flames and thick white smoke.
The launch has made South Korea the 10th nation in the world to launch a satellite using its own technology.
It was South Korea’s second launch of the Nuri missile. On the first attempt last October, the rocket’s dummy payload reached the desired altitude of 700 kilometers but failed to make orbit because the rocket’s third-stage engine burned out earlier than planned.
South Korea, the world’s 10th largest economy, is a major supplier of semiconductors, automobiles and smartphones to global markets. But its space development program lags behind that of its Asian neighbors China, India and Japan.
North Korea launched its first and second Earth observation satellites into orbit in 2012 and 2016, although there is no evidence either of them ever transmitted space-based imagery and data home. These North Korean launches called for UN economic sanctions because they were seen as a cover for tests of the country’s banned long-range missile technology.
Since the early 1990s, South Korea has launched a number of satellites, but all from foreign launch sites or aboard a rocket built using foreign technology. In 2013, South Korea successfully launched a satellite from its soil for the first time, but the first stage of its launch vehicle was made by the Russians.
After South Korea’s 2013 satellite launch, North Korea’s State Department accused the United States of revealing “double standards and a predatory nature” for supporting the South Korean launch but spearheading UN sanctions on North Korea’s 2012 satellite launch. North Korea did not immediately respond to Tuesday’s Nuri launch.
South Korea plans to conduct four more Nuri missile launches in the coming years. It also hopes to send a probe to the moon, build next-generation launch vehicles, and send large satellites into orbit.
South Korean officials said the Nuri missile had no military purpose.
The transfer of space launch technology is severely restricted under a multilateral export control regime as it has military applications. Experts say ballistic missiles and launch vehicles have similar bodies, engines and other components, although missiles require a reentry vehicle and other technology.
“If you put a satellite on top of a rocket, it becomes a launch vehicle. But if you mount a warhead on it, it becomes a weapon,” said Kwon Yong Soo, a former professor at the Korea National Defense University in South Korea. “If we succeed in launching Nuri, it makes real sense because we are also successful in testing a long-range missile that can be used to build a long-range missile.”
Lee Choon Geun, an honorary research fellow at South Korea’s Science and Technology Policy Institute, said it is difficult to use Nuri directly as a rocket because it uses liquid fuel, which needs to be kept at an extremely low temperature and takes a much longer refueling time as solid fuels. He said North Korean long-range missiles also use liquid propellants, but extremely toxic ones that are kept at normal temperatures and take less time to refuel than Nuri’s.
This year North Korea has tested about 30 missiles with potential ranges that will put the US mainland and its regional allies like South Korea and Japan within striking distance.
Kwon said Nuri’s successful Nuri launch would prove South Korea also has the capability to send a spy satellite into orbit.
South Korea currently has no military reconnaissance satellites of its own and relies on US spy satellites to monitor strategic installations in North Korea. South Korea has announced that it will soon launch its own surveillance satellites.