On 3rd Try, South Korea Launches Satellite Into Orbit

Yonhap/Reuters

The Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 was launched from the Naro Space Center in Goheung, South Korea, on Wednesday.

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea succeeded in thrusting a satellite into orbit for the first time on Wednesday, joining an elite club of space technology leaders seven weeks after the successful launching of a satellite by its rival, North Korea.

South Korea has attached an intense national pride to the 140-ton, 108-foot-tall Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1, or KSLV-1, which was built with the help of Russian technology. Feeling behind China and Japan, both of which have successful space programs, South Korea has sought a technological prowess of its own.

That task gained more urgency after North Korea launched a long-range rocket on Dec. 12 that put a satellite into orbit, after earlier failures. Only a handful of countries have succeeded in independently launching satellites into orbit, with Iran also recently joining the club. After studying the debris of the North Korean rocket, which splashed into South Korean waters, officials here determined that North Korea, despite its backward economy, had built key parts of its rocket.

With all major South Korean television stations broadcasting live, the two-stage rocket blasted off from the newly built Naro Space Center in Goheung, 200 miles south of Seoul.

“After analyzing the data, we determined that our satellite entered its intended orbit,” Lee Ju-ho, the minister of education, science and technology, said during a nationally televised news conference. “Today, we took a leap toward becoming a power in space technology.”

Although part of the two-stage rocket was built by the Russians, South Korea sees the successful launching as having given it an important toehold in space technology, the latest high-tech market where the country has decided to become a player.

The successful launching comes at a delicate time on the Korean Peninsula, as North Korea, stung by new international sanctions over its own rocket launching, has promised a nuclear test. The United Nations has banned North Korea, which has an active nuclear arms program, from ballistic missile tests; the West considers the launching a test of that technology.

South Korea previously fired a KSLV-1 rocket twice from Goheung, first in 2009 and again in 2010, but each time, the rocket failed to put a satellite into orbit. This was the third effort, initially scheduled for October, but it had been twice delayed at the last minute because of technical glitches.

For years, South Korea’s space ambitions have languished under the constraints of agreements with the United States, which feared that a robust rocket program might be transferred to the building of missiles and help accelerate a regional arms race.