SEOUL, May 26 (NNN-YONHAP) – South Korea launched its homegrown space rocket yesterday to carry eight satellites into orbit, marking the country’s second successful rocket launch.
The Korea Space Launch Vehicle (KSLV)-II, also dubbed Nuri, blasted off from the Naro Space Centre, in the southern coastal village of Goheung, at about 6:24 p.m. local time (0924 GMT), live footage from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) showed.
The three-stage rocket, completed its first-stage separation about two minutes after blastoff and reached the target altitude of 550 km at around 6:37 p.m. (0937 GMT), separating the satellites one by one every 20 seconds.
Following the separations, the third-stage booster flew further until its engine stopped, at 6:42 p.m. (0942 GMT).
It marked the second successful launch of the Nuri rocket, after an attempt succeeded in June last year to put a dummy satellite and a performance verification satellite into orbit.
The first Nuri test-launch failed in Oct, 2021, when the rocket reached a target altitude of 700 km, but failed to put a dummy satellite into orbit, as its third-stage booster engine burned out earlier than planned.
The country invested nearly two trillion won (1.5 billion U.S. dollars), over the past decade, to indigenously develop the space launch vehicle, capable of deploying a 1.5-tonne practical satellite into the low-Earth orbit.
The Nuri rocket was clustered by four 75-tonne-grade liquid engines in the first stage, one 75-tonne-grade liquid engine in the second stage, and one 7-tonne-grade liquid engine in the third and final stage.– NNN-YONHAP
