According to the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), the launch took place in normal mode and the flight is currently being monitored. South Korean President Yun Seok Yeol is also watching the launch in real time via video broadcast. Note that the launch was scheduled for Wednesday, May 24, but due to identified problems, it had to be postponed for a day.
If all goes well, then Nuri (another name is KSLV-II or Korea Space Launch Vehicle-II) in less than 19 minutes after launch should launch eight satellites weighing from 4 to 180 kg into a planned orbit of 550 km. The final conclusion on the success of the mission can be made about 1h20 after the launch, when the satellites will have to make contact with the control center.
Recall that the first launch of the Nuri launcher was carried out on October 21, 2021, but it was recognized as “partially successful”, since at the final stage the satellite model could not enter the planned orbit. The second flight of “Nuri” on June 21, 2022 was completely in normal mode. The system reached its target altitude and launched a 200 kg spacecraft, four small satellites and a 1.3 ton payload mockup into low Earth orbit. However, during the launch in June last year, the satellites were not used to perform some separate independent tasks, but were used to control the operation of the launch vehicle. In addition, the role of the “main load” weighing 1300 kg was still performed by the layout in order to reduce losses in the event of a breakdown. The current launch is no longer of a test nature, but exclusively “work” or commercial, when eight satellites are launched into orbit with their own tasks of observing the Earth’s surface, monitoring the state of the atmosphere , etc.
Help “RG”
The Nuri launcher (KSLV-II) is a three-stage system with a total weight of 200.4 tons and a length of 47.5 m. The first stage (length 21.6 m) is provided by four engines with a thrust of 75 tons each, in the second (13.6 m) a 75-ton engine is installed, and on the third (7 m) – a 7 ton engine. The payload this time was a total of 504 kg and consisted of eight small satellites: NEXTSat-2 (weight 180 kg), four SNIPE satellites A, B, C, D (Korean name for “Toyoset” satellites 1-4, total weight 40 kg), Lumir-T1 (10 kg), KSAT3U (6 kg) and JLC-101-v1-2 (4 kg). The cost of the project to create the launch vehicle “Nuri” (KSLV-II) amounted to 1.8 billion dollars and has been implemented since 2010.
Read the Latest Science and Technology News Today on The Eastern Herald.
