South Korea successfully launched a fully domestically produced Nuri rocket for the first time on Tuesday, orbiting multiple satellites in a major breakthrough for the Asian nation’s space program. The three-stage rocket lifted off at 4 p.m. local time carrying a 1.3 metric ton dummy satellite, a smaller 162.5 kg satellite whose purpose was to verify Nuri’s performance, and four research CubeSats developed by universities. The verification satellite confirmed it […]
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“Naro-1”
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
South Korea has set an October date for the maiden flight of the nation’s first fully domestically developed satellite launch vehicle, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) announced. Minister of Science, ICT and Future Planning Hyesuk Lim approved KARI’s plan to conduct flight tests of the new Nuri booster from the Naro Space Center on Oct. 21 and May 19, 2022.
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by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
Russia recently marked the 25th anniversary of the entry of the Proton rocket into the international commercial marketplace. On April 8, 1996, a Proton-K booster with a DM3 upper stage launched the Astra 1F geosynchronous communications satellite built by U.S.-based Hughes for Luxembourg’s SES from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
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Inaugural Angara A5 launch (Credit: Khrunichev)
It took Russia about 20 years to develop its Angara rocket. Now it appears it will take 10 years for the booster to fully replace the Proton rocket.
That’s the word from Yuri Koptev, who chairs the the science and engineering council of Rostec Corporation. He predicts the venerable Proton, which first flew in 1965, won’t be phased out in favor of Angara until 2024 at the earliest.
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Expedition 37 takes off for the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA)
By Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
Russia once again led the world in orbital launches in 2013, keeping the International Space Station supplied with a study stream of crew members and cargo while earning hard currency with commercial satellite launches.
Although the vast majority of Russia’s launches were successful, the spectacular failure in July of a Proton rocket — which nosedived into the ground shortly after liftoff — accelerated efforts to reform the nation’s failure-prone space program. By the end of the year, the Russian space agency Roscosmos had a new leader and a major effort was underway to consolidate a large part of the bloated and inefficient space sector under a single government-owned company.
During 2013, Russia introduced a new variant of its venerable Soyuz rocket while also making progress on constructing a new spaceport in the Far East and developing a larger human spacecraft to replace the Soyuz transport and a heavy-lift booster to facilitate deep space exploration.
KSLV-1 first stage booster. (Credit: Khrunichev)
South Korea once again aborted the planned launch of the KSLV-1 rocket due to a problem with the domestically-built upper stage, according to media reports. This will likely delay the launch into next year.
The Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) said that it will determine the next launch date after a thorough inspection of the KSLV-1, but it is unlikely that the liftoff will take place this year as the current launch deadline is scheduled to end on Dec. 5. Engineers say it will take at least four to five days to figure out what went wrong and fix it.
South Korea could attempt a launch of the delayed Naro-1 (KSLV-1) rocket on November 29 after a replacement part for the launch vehicle’s Russian supplied first stage was delivered to the Naro Launch Center, ITAR-TASS reports. The replacement part, which is a rubber seal in the connector between the Russian-build first-stage rocket of Naro-1 and the launch pad, was delivered to South Korea on Saturday and is already at the […]
South Korea is hoping the third time is a charm for the Naro-1 rocket, which crashed in it first two launch attempts:
Korea will make its third and last attempt to launch a homegrown space rocket between Oct. 26 and 31 depending on the weather. The launch comes two years and four months after the second one failed on June 10, 2010….
The rocket will be taken to the launch pad on Oct. 24. The space center will conduct a final rehearsal the following day and make a final decision at 11 p.m. the same day when and whether to launch the rocket….
KSLV-1 first stage booster. (Credit: Khrunichev)
Moscow, August 22, 2012 (Khrunichev PR) — The Khrunichev Space Center have completed fabrication and tests of Stage 1 for KSLV-1 (Korea Space Launch Vehicle #1), and processed the flight article for shipment to South Korea.
Earlier today, the manufacturer has started transfer of the shipping container with Stage 1 onto a rail convoy to ship this stage to the City of Ulyanovsk within the next few days. From Ulyanovsk, the cargo will be flown by the Polyot air carrier to the South Korean city/port of Pusan to be then re-directed to the Naro Space Center.
MOSCOW (Khrunichev PR) — At the State Research and Production Space Center Khrunichev, bench tests are being conducted on the first stage of the light-class KSLV-1 rocket. After completing the tests the company’s specialists will prepare the product for shipment to South Korea’s space center Naro where the rocket KSLV-1 will undergo pre-launch preparations. The shipment of the rocket to South Korea is scheduled for August 2012. The third launch […]