South Korea's homegrown Nuri rocket puts satellites in orbit for 1st time
The nation's new Nuri rocket lifted off from Naro Space Center on Tuesday (June 21) at 3 a.m. EDT (0700 GMT), eventually deploying six payloads into Earth orbit, Reuters reported(opens in new tab).
One of those payloads was a 358-pound (162.5 kilograms) test satellite that successfully made contact with a base station in Antarctica after reaching orbit, according to Reuters. The others were a 1.3-ton dummy satellite and four tiny cubesats developed by university researchers.
Tuesday's liftoff was the second orbital mission for the three-stage, 155-foot-tall (47.2 meters) Nuri. The first, in October 2021, failed to place a dummy payload into orbit as planned after the rocket's third stage shut down prematurely.
So Tuesday's success was a very big deal for South Korea, which wants to launch its own constellation of navigation satellites and send probes to the moon, among other space goals.
@thewonderofspace
