{"id":45686,"date":"2023-11-23T19:50:31","date_gmt":"2023-11-23T11:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/north-korea-launched-a-satellite-then-apparently-blew-up-its-booster\/"},"modified":"2023-11-23T19:50:31","modified_gmt":"2023-11-23T11:50:31","slug":"north-korea-launched-a-satellite-then-apparently-blew-up-its-booster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/north-korea-launched-a-satellite-then-apparently-blew-up-its-booster\/","title":{"rendered":"North Korea launched a satellite, then apparently blew up its booster"},"content":{"rendered":"

North Korea launched a small military spy satellite Tuesday on the country\u2019s first successful orbital launch since 2016. This, alone, would be newsworthy, but this launch comes with a twist.<\/p>\n

An automated camera operated by Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, captured the launch. The camera is part of a worldwide network of all-sky cameras to detect meteors streaking through Earth\u2019s atmosphere. On Tuesday night, it caught a glimpse of North Korea\u2019s Ch\u014fllima 1 rocket climbing higher in the night sky until its booster engine cuts off. Then an upper stage engine fires to continue powering its payload into orbit, leaving behind the rocket\u2019s spent expendable booster to fall into the Yellow Sea west of the Korean Peninsula.<\/p>\n

Then, the night vision camera recorded a bright fireball. Instead of plunging into the sea, the booster explodes. It\u2019s unusual to see a spent booster blow up during the launch of expendable rocket, so this raises questions. Did North Korea intentionally explode its rocket?<\/p>\n

Falling into the enemy\u2019s hands<\/h2>\n

The launch Tuesday was the third flight of North Korea\u2019s Ch\u014fllima 1 rocket, which appears to be more sophisticated than the launch vehicles North Korea used to deploy its first two successful satellites in 2012 and 2016. This rocket is likely based on North Korea\u2019s newest intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong 17, designed to deliver nuclear warheads to targets around the world.<\/p>\n

With the addition of an upper stage, the design of which is unknown, the Hwasong 17 can be turned into a satellite launcher capable of hauling a payload of several hundred pounds into orbit. Intelligence officials in South Korea say the new missile and the Ch\u014fllima 1 rocket may use engine technology North Korea acquired from Russia.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also possible North Korea may have developed their own engines that appear similar to the Russian RD-250 engine, which consumes hydrazine in combination with nitrogen tetroxide. When those storable propellants come together, they automatically combust, making the engine design relatively simple and a good solution for a missile that needs to be on long-term alert.<\/p>\n

North Korea\u2019s first two Ch\u014fllima 1 launches in May and August ended in failure. After the May launch, South Korean officials said the country\u2019s navy recovered relatively large fragments of the rocket from the Yellow Sea, along with wreckage of the satellite onboard the launcher. South Korea\u2019s military said at the time that it would inspect the debris to determine whether foreign parts, such as Russian engine technology, were used on the rocket.<\/p>\n

South Korean officials said the satellite had little military value, but leaders in Seoul haven\u2019t said whether their inspections of the rocket revealed any new details about possible Russian involvement in the North Korean rocket program.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Shin Won-sik, South Korea\u2019s minister of national defense, pointed to warming relations between Russia and North Korea, including a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at a Russian spaceport earlier this year. Kim and Putin discussed several areas of cooperation, including North Korean ammunition for Russia to use in its war in Ukraine, and Russian help on North Korea\u2019s rocket program.<\/p>\n

\u201cDidn\u2019t the first and second attempts fail because of engine problems? This time, the biggest feature is the success of the engine\u2026 It shows that Putin\u2019s offer to help in August was not a pretense,\u201d Shin said, according to Reuters. While there\u2019s some debate among analysts and intelligence officials about the overall involvement of foreign countries in North Korea\u2019s missile program, it doesn\u2019t seem likely Russia could have supplied engines for Pyongyang to use on a rocket launch within less than three months.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

South Korean naval forces recovered pieces of a North Korean rocket after a launch in May. <\/p>\n

Credit:
\n South Korean Navy<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

It would make sense that North Korea would take the unusual step to rig its booster to explode before falling intact into the ocean, where South Korean vessels could recover the debris. That seems to be a likely explanation, according to analysts who track North Korea missile launch activity.<\/p>\n

Marco Langbroek, a Dutch archeologist who expertly tracks missile launches on his website, concluded the booster explosion \u201ccould well have been deliberate\u201d to keep the North Korean rocket from falling into the hands of South Korea.<\/p>\n

The camera that recorded the North Korean launch was developed by Mike Hankey, an amateur astronomer and operations manager for the American Meteor Society, to observe naturally occurring meteors. They can also occasionally catch views of space debris and rocket launches, Hankey told Ars.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe stations are designed to work together in a network to solve events and trajectories,\u201d he wrote in an email to Ars. \u201cWe have about 200 worldwide. This is the first time we have recorded a North Korean launch. Also, the first time we have recorded a detonation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This video frame from an all-sky camera in Seoul, South Korea, shows the fireball from the exploding booster of North Korea\u2019s Ch\u014fllima rocket. The rocket\u2019s second stage is visible to the upper left of the fireball, continuing into space.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Yonsei University<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

The rest of the North Korean launch sequence appeared to go according to plan. The second stage of the Ch\u014fllima 1 rocket continued into space, and a third stage then placed North Korea\u2019s Malligyong 1 satellite into orbit.<\/p>\n

North Korea\u2019s state-run news agency declared the launch a success, and publicly available tracking data from the US military confirmed this. The military\u2019s tracking radars detected the satellite in a polar orbit roughly 310 miles (500 kilometers) above Earth.<\/p>\n

Images released by North Korea before the launch appeared to show the Malligyong 1 satellite is about the size of a refrigerator, larger than the satellites North Korea put into orbit before. The satellite is designed to take surveillance pictures of locations, presumably US and allied military forces, around the world. But it\u2019s still too small to provide the highest-resolution reconnaissance imagery collected by spy satellites from the United States and other leading space-faring nations.<\/p>\n

South Korea\u2019s government condemned the North Korean launch Tuesday. Shin, South Korea\u2019s defense minister, called the launch a \u201cclear violation\u201d of a UN Security Council resolution banning North Korean launches using ballistic missile technology. He said the launch was a \u201cserious act of provocation\u201d against South Korea and the international community.<\/p>\n

In response to the satellite launch, South Korea said it will suspend parts of a 2018 military agreement with North Korea and resume reconnaissance of North Korean military forces in border areas.<\/p>\n

Nov. 22, 2023: This story was updated with comments from Mike Hankey and details about Russian engine technology.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

North Korea launched a small military spy satellite Tuesday on the country\u2019s first successful orbital launch since 2016. This, alone, would be newsworthy, but this launch comes with a twist. An automated camera operated by Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, captured the launch. The camera is part of a worldwide network of all-sky cameras […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25,1570],"class_list":["post-45686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-launch","tag-north-korea"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}