A SpaceX rocket has launched South Korea’s first military spy satellite, ratcheting up the peninsula’s space race after Pyongyang launched its first military probe last week.
The Seoul reconnaissance satellite, carried by one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets, lifted off from the American space base in Vandenberg, California, at 10:19 a.m. local time (7:19 p.m. in Italy). “It’s a beautiful launch day and Falcon Nine has successfully launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base,” a SpaceX spokesperson said during a live broadcast. The word “Korea” was written on the rocket.
If successfully placed in orbit, South Korea would have acquired its first domestically built spy satellite to monitor nuclear-armed North Korea. Seoul plans to launch four more spy satellites by the end of 2025 to strengthen its reconnaissance capabilities in the North. According to Yonhap News Agency, the Seoul satellite can detect an object up to 30 centimeters in size in an orbit between 400 and 600 kilometers from Earth.
The launch comes less than two weeks after Pyongyang successfully put its spy satellite into orbit. This is intended to provide images of the most important military sites in the USA and South Korea as well as photos of the Italian capital Rome. However, it has not yet released any of the satellite images it claims to have. The North’s launch of Malligyong-1 was Pyongyang’s third attempt to put such a satellite into orbit, following two failures in May and August. Seoul said the North would receive technical assistance from Moscow in return for supplying weapons for Russia’s war with Ukraine.
Additionally, North Korea has threatened to shoot down U.S. spy satellites in response to “any attack.” Pyongyang said such an operation would be viewed as a “declaration of war,” the official KCNA news agency reported. This statement came after a US official said that Washington had various “tools” at its disposal
reversible and irreversible” to “deprive an adversary of its space capabilities and counteract it.”
North Korea was not explicitly mentioned, but the reference to Pyongyang was clearly visible. “If the United States attempts to violate the legitimate territory of a sovereign state,” Pyongyang “will consider taking self-defense measures to weaken it.”
or destroy the functionality of American spy satellites,” warned a spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry.
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