Tag : Homegrown

Seoul: South Korea on Tuesday launched its homegrown space rocket Nuri in the second attempt to put satellites into orbit, a critical mission for the country's space programme. According to the Ministry of Science and ICT, the 200-tonne Nuri, also known as KSLV-II, blasted off from the Naro Space Centre in the country's southern coastal village of Goheung at 4 p.m., Yonhap reported. The ministry said the rocket completed its launch as planned and aerospace engineers were conducting detailed data analysis to determine whether the satellites successfully reached their orbits. The result of the launch is expected to be announced at around 5:10 p.m. South Korea had planned to launch the three-stage rocket last week, but a technical glitch in the oxidizer tank sensor forced the country to postpone the liftoff. In a meeting of Nuri's launch management committee Monday, the science ministry and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) concluded that Nuri's final technical inspection proceeded without any problems. The weather forecast also satisfied launch conditions. A successful launch would make South Korea the seventh country in the world to have developed a space launch vehicle that can carry a more than 1-tonne satellite, after Russia, the US, France, China, Japan and India. It would also mean South Korea will now have secured the key independent technology for developing and launching space rockets carrying homegrown satellites, opening up a new era in the country's space program. Today's launch is also Nuri's second liftoff after its first attempt ended in failure last year. In October, Nuri successfully flew to its target altitude of 700 kilometres but failed to put a dummy satellite into orbit, as its third-stage engine ...