At 2239GMT on 12 April, North Korea launched its three-stage Unha 3 rocket from its new Sohae Satellite Launching Station at Tongchang-ri on the south facing coast of the country. The launch vehicle flew for between 60 and 90 seconds before breaking up and crashing into the Yellow Sea off the west coast of the Korean penninsula. A failure on the first stage is suspected. The satellite payload was a simple remote sensing satellite called Kwangmyongsong 3. Launch mass was 100 kilograms as quoted by Ryu Gum Chol, deputy director of space exploration in the Department of Space Technology of North Korea.
Before flight there had been protests from governments which believed the flight was really a test of hardware to be used for nuclear warhead-carrying Taepo Dong ballistic missiles.
According to the Flightglobal Ascend SpaceTrak database North Korea has had two other satellite launch attempts, in 1998 and 2009, both of which are considered to have been failures despite North Korean claims to have orbited satellites. There was also a suborbital flight test of a launch vehicle in 2006, which also failed early in its flight.
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©Rex Features |
Source: FlightGlobal.com
