An official from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute speaks during a briefing for the fifth Nuri rocket launch in Jongno District, central Seoul, on Sept. 15.YONHAP
Final assembly of the rocket for Nuri's fifth launch is nearing completion at the Naro Space Center in Goheung, South Jeolla, the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA) and Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) said Tuesday.
While Nuri’s fourth launch last November ushered private industry into a bigger role in Korea’s space program, the upcoming fifth has a different goal: building a satellite constellation of its own.
The fifth launch of Korea’s homegrown Nuri space rocket — scheduled for a daytime launch on Oct. 7 — is three weeks away.
The assembly work that began in late June is due to wrap up by the end of September, followed by final checks and a move to the launchpad on Oct. 6, according to a joint briefing by KASA and KARI.
The rocket will carry 15 satellites: five Neonsat microsatellites — numbered Nos. 2 through 6 — as its primary payload and 10 CubeSats developed by Korean universities, research institutes and companies.
It will be Korea’s first attempt to launch multiple primary-payload satellites at once. With 15 satellites aboard, it will also be Nuri’s largest satellite delivery mission to date.
Neonsat No. 5 microsatellites mounted on the third stage of the fifth Nuri rocketKOREA AEROSPACE ADMINISTRATION
A satellite constellation is a network of small satellites with similar capabilities that work together as one system instead of a single large satellite.
Neonsat — jointly developed by the Satellite Technology Research Center at KAIST and satellite manufacturer Satrec Initiative — is a microsatellite weighing less than 100 kilograms (220 pounds). The satellites are equipped with cameras capable of 1-meter (3.3-foot) black-and-white and 4-meter color imagery. They will be used for national security purposes and to monitor disasters such as wildfires and floods.
The prototype Neonsat-1 was launched in April 2024.
Five more satellites, Neonsat-2 through 6, will be sent into orbit on the upcoming mission, followed by another five aboard Nuri’s sixth launch next year.
Once all 10 satellites are in orbit, the constellation will be able to image the Korean Peninsula more than three times a day and revisit the same location within 24 hours.
The 10 CubeSats flying as secondary payloads will put a range of commercial and public-sector technologies to the test in space.
Visitors watch a model of the Nuri rocket at the Gwacheon National Science Museum in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi, on Nov. 30, 2025.YONHAP
Space Liintech, a space pharmaceutical company, will conduct a new experiment aboard its BEE-1012 satellite, which features onboard AI to assess and control the crystalline state of pharmaceutical substances in space. The company previously sent the small BEE-1000 satellite into orbit on Nuri’s fourth launch to research compounds used in cancer treatments.
Startup Quaternion will use its “Persat02” satellite to track and monitor marine debris around Jeju Island and along Korea’s southern coast.
KARI’s second Korean space components verification platform will test the durability of domestically developed components from six companies and institutions in the space environment, including next-generation dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM, and universal flash storage, or UFS, products from SK hynix.
Other small satellites aboard the fifth Nuri rocket are: UEL-Y-Sys from Unmanned Exploration Laboratory; DaejeonSat-1 from the Daejeon city government; CPSat from Pusan National University and Chosun University; GBSAT from KAIST; and SD-1SAT from Space & Bean.
Safely deploying the satellites will be one of the mission’s toughest tests: releasing a record 15 satellites while keeping them far enough apart to prevent the risk of cascading collisions.
KARI has equipped Nuri with satellite separation devices designed to minimize shock, as well as a multi-satellite adapter. After the third-stage engine shuts down at an altitude of about 575 kilometers (357 miles), the five Neonsat satellites will be deployed sequentially at intervals of 35 to 40 seconds.
“We have established an ellipsoidal space-object avoidance zone extending 200 kilometers lengthwise and 50 kilometers across, and we will use that zone to finalize the launch time,” said KARI senior official Park Jong-chan.
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.
