North Korea Admits to Failure of Space Launch Vehicle, Vows to Launch It Again
North Korea much anticipated space launch of supposedly domestically produced reconnaissance satellite ended in failure:
An apparent part of a purported North Korean space launch vehicle is seen in waters some 200 kilometers west of the southwestern island of Eocheong on May 31, 2023, in this photo provided by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (Yonhap)
North Korea fired what it claims to be a “space launch vehicle” southward Wednesday, but it fell into the Yellow Sea after an “abnormal” flight, the South Korean military said, in a botched launch that defied international criticism and warnings.
The North confirmed the failure, saying its new “Chollima-1” rocket carrying a military reconnaissance satellite, “Malligyong-1,” fell into the sea due to the “abnormal starting of the second-stage engine,” according to its official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). It plans to conduct a second launch as soon as possible, the KCNA said.
Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it detected the launch from Tongchang-ri on the North’s west coast at 6:29 a.m. and the projectile fell into waters some 200 kilometers west of the South’s southwestern island of Eocheong following its flight over the waters far west of the border island of Baengnyeong.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but what is most interesting about this failed launch is that North Korea’s state media the KCNA actually admitted to it at least in their English language reporting. The KCNA also said that North Korea vowed to launch the rocket again. However, the last time they had a major failure of a space launch was all the way back in 2012 and it took them 8 months before they successfully launched again.
Overall though this is pretty embarrassing for the Kim regime considering South Korea just last week put 8 satellites into orbit using a domestically produced rocket. With that said these failed launches are not always failures if you know what went wrong and can fix it on the next launch. We will see probably in the coming months if North Korea learned from this failure.
