Nuri’s CubeSats signal successful orbit delivery, so what is next for Korea's space industry?
All nine deployed CubeSats from South Korea’s fifth Nuri rocket launch have exchanged signals with ground stations, marking another milestone for the country’s space program.
The Nuri rocket lifts off with five Neonsat microsatellites and 10 CubeSats from the Naro Space Center in Goheung County, Jeonnam-Gwangju, on Oct. 7.KOREA AEROSPACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Every satellite the Nuri rocket placed into orbit on its fifth flight has now exchanged signals with ground stations.
All nine CubeSats that separated normally from the rocket have made contact, the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA) and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) said Tuesday. With that, Nuri has completed its job of delivering satellites to space.
Nuri lifted off from the Naro Space Center in Goheung County, Jeonnam-Gwangju, last Wednesday. Its main payload was five Neonsat microsatellites for an Earth observation constellation, and it also carried 10 CubeSats built by companies, local governments, universities and research institutes. One of the CubeSats, Quaternion’s Persat02, failed to deploy, while the rest reached orbit normally.
Six of the nine have established two-way communication with ground stations, and stations are still receiving signals or data from the other three. The CubeSats will begin their full missions after an initial operation phase to confirm that all their systems work properly.
KARI’s second verification platform for Korean-made space components is one of the six that has made two-way contact. The platform will test whether six types of Korean products, including SK hynix dynamic random-access memory and storage chips, can withstand the heat and radiation of space. Space Liintech’s BEE-1012 will conduct drug experiments in microgravity, and the Unmanned Exploration Laboratory’s UEL-Y-Sys will observe fine dust, among other tasks.
The other six will photograph the ground, monitor changes in cities, measure radiation over the South Atlantic, detect high-energy protons in low Earth orbit, observe the atmosphere and test laser communications.
The Nuri space rocket is installed at the launchpad at the Naro Space Center in Goheung, South Jeolla, on Nov. 25 in this photo provided by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute.KOREA AEROSPACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE
“In this fifth Nuri launch, we succeeded in making contact with the CubeSats in far less time than in the fourth launch,” KASA Administrator Oh Tae-seog said. “This was achieved because the launch vehicle placed the satellites into their target orbits more precisely and provided accurate satellite position data, and it means the technology has matured another step.”
Korea should now move on from asking whether it can build rockets to asking what kind of space transportation industry it should build, experts say.
“To connect Nuri’s success to commercialization, we need a Korean-style space transportation industrial policy that sits between leaving it to the market and having the government develop [launch vehicles] itself and combines long-term public procurement with competitive support for the private sector,” An Hyoung-joon, head of the space and public-sector team at the Science and Technology Policy Institute, said.
The government plans to put five more Neonsats into orbit on Nuri’s sixth launch in the second half of next year. That will bring the number launched on Nuri to 10 and complete the constellation. The government also plans to launch Nuri at least once a year through 2032.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
