Crucial South Korean Rocket Launch Set for Wednesday

Korea’s Space Rocket ‘Naro’ Gets Transported to Launch Pad
Arirang

With just two days left until the second launch attempt of Korea’s satellite-carrying rocket, the KSLV-1, scientists at the Naro Space Center successfully raised the rocket on the launch pad in preparation for its lift-off on Wednesday.

According to the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, the rocket, also known as ‘Naro,’ left the assembly complex at 8:15 a.m. this morning and arrived at the launch pad roughly one hour and 20 minutes later. Before the rocket was placed vertically on the launch pad various fuel lines and system control cables were first connected to Naro, then at around 3:30 this afternoon engineers began the process of lifting the rocket using the erector arm….

The 33-meter tall, 140-ton rocket is a mid-sized launch vehicle consisting of two sections, the Russian-made stage operating on liquid fuel and the Korean-made stage using solid fuel that will carry a satellite weighing 100 kilograms into orbit.

The country has so far spent 502.5 billion won, roughly 418 million US dollars, on the project in hopes of becoming only the tenth country capable of successfully launching a satellite from its own soil.

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