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S.Korea launches 1st homegrown rocket

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2021-10-22 13:22:00Xinhua Editor : Li Yan ECNS App Download

South Korea test-launched its first homegrown space launch vehicle Thursday, but the rocket failed to put a dummy satellite into the low-Earth orbit (600-800 km).

The KSLV-II, also dubbed Nuri, blasted off from the Naro Space Center in the southern coastal village of Goheung at 5:00 p.m. local time (0800 GMT) on Thursday, live footage from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) showed.

After the liftoff, the three-stage space rocket flew south to reach an altitude of 59 km in the first thrust section and an altitude of 600 km at about 5:08 p.m. The third-stage booster engine stopped at 5:12 p.m., and the satellite was separated from the booster at 5:15 p.m.

However, the 1.5-ton dummy satellite failed to be put into the sun synchronous orbit as planned.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in told a televised speech at the space center that the homegrown rocket finished all of its flight sequence, but he noted that putting the dummy satellite into orbit remained as an unfinished task to be tackled.

Moon said it was something to brag about to send the rocket up at an altitude of 700 km in space, expecting that the next test-launch of Nuri, scheduled for May next year, could achieve a complete success.

It was South Korea's first test-launch of its homegrown rocket that was entirely designed and built in the country.

South Korea invested nearly 2 trillion won (1.7 billion U.S. dollars) for the past decade to indigenously develop the space launch vehicle, including the engine and propellant tank, as well as the launch pad and launch vehicle subsystem.

About 300 local companies, including some 30 major companies comprising around 500 people, participated in the development of the space vehicle that can deploy a 1.5-ton practical satellite into the low-Earth orbit.

The 200-ton Nuri space rocket, which measures 47.2 meters in length and 3.5 meters in maximum diameter, was clustered by four 75-ton-grade liquid engines in the first stage, a 75-ton-grade liquid engine in the second stage and a 7-ton-grade liquid engine in the third stage.

The homegrown space rocket development project began in March 2010, and the country successfully test-launched its indigenous 75-ton-grade liquid engine, called KSLV-TLV, in November 2018.

KARI plans to test-launch the Nuri space launch vehicle five more times by 2027 to secure reliability.

In the long term, KARI plans to enhance the Nuri performance to carry a 2.8-ton satellite into the low orbit by developing a higher-performance main engine of 82-ton-grade thrust.

It also aims to test-launch the enhanced space launch vehicle twice in 2029 and 2030, and secure an 830-kg moon probe launch performance by 2030.

In January 2013, South Korea succeeded in test-launching its first-ever KSLV-I space launch vehicle, also known as Naro, but the first-stage booster engine of the two-stage vehicle was built in Russia.

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