This is not a NASA Website. You might learn something. It's YOUR space agency. Get involved. Take it back. Make it work - for YOU.
News

North Korea Apparently Put Something Into Orbit

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
December 12, 2012
Filed under

NORAD acknowledges missile launch
“North American Aerospace Defense Command officials acknowledged today that U.S. missile warning systems detected and tracked the launch of a North Korean missile at 7:49 p.m. EST. The missile was tracked on a southerly azimuth. Initial indications are that the first stage fell into the Yellow Sea. The second stage was assessed to fall into the Philippine Sea. Initial indications are that the missile deployed an object that appeared to achieve orbit.”
North Korea Launches Rocket and Claims Satellite in Orbit, VOA
“The second version of satellite Kwangmyongsong-3 successfully lifted off from the Sohae Space Center in Cholsan County, North Pyongan Province by carrier rocket Unha-3 on December 12. The satellite entered its present orbit.”
North Korean satellite ‘tumbling out of control,’ US officials say
“The object that North Korea sent into space early Thursday appears to be “tumbling out of control” as it orbits the earth, U.S. officials told NBC News. The officials said that it is indeed some kind of space vehicle but they still haven’t been able to determine exactly what the satellite is supposed to do.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

46 responses to “North Korea Apparently Put Something Into Orbit”

  1. meekGee says:
    0
    0

    I was reading about this launch on other sites, and everyone is up in arms about  how it’s all just a military launch in disguise, and how dare they invest in aerospace when their people are hungry.

    You know, there’s no argument that the ruling regime there is bats**t crazy, and best for their own people if they evolve into an open society.

    But for this launch – congratulations.  Seriously, welcome to the club, and I am sure their rocket engineers care a lot more about space then about blowing up New York.  (When Uncle Kim is not visiting, that is…)

    • kcowing says:
      0
      0

      You might want to do a little more research before making such benevolent guesses as to what North Korea is doing – and why.  Their devotion of scarce resources for this program while their people starve is little different than what the Nazis did to build their rockets using slave labor.

      • meekGee says:
        0
        0

        Keith – when the N. Koreans develop a nuclear bomb, I worry, since they can put it on an untraceable fishing boat and explode it in a Japanese of US port, for example, claiming innocence.  That’s their MO.  (which I know since I don’t do research, as you say)

        As an offensive weapon, they really don’t have any use for a long-range ballistic missile.  What are they going to do – lob one at NY?

        As for Nazis – I’m tired of people using that term for any political argument.  What do the Nazis have to do with N. Korea?  If you want a more historically similar analogy, maybe try Stalin, but even that’s not very good.  I feel silly even counting the differences.  Not every enemy is a Hitler.

        Oh…  and I almost missed it – the scientists working for Hitler are also the ones that got Neil Armstrong to the moon.  If you like rockets, you like rockets.

        • kcowing says:
          0
          0

          Drop an ICBM/IRBM warhead from space on densely-packed NY (or any other city) and watch what happens. Add in biologicals, nerve agents, and/or radioactive substances and you could inflict sheer havoc. You really need to take a few history classes. Ever wonder how the Nazi’s built their V-2 rockets? Slave labor who were starved to death in the process. North Korea has back to back famines and spends money on IRBMs? I see little difference.

          • HyperJ says:
            0
            0

            “Drop an ICBM/IRBM warhead from space on densely-packed NY (or any other city) and watch what happens.”
            Keith, you should know that the concept of dropping a nuke from orbit is so incredibly inefficient and tactically inflexible that nobody has bothered to do it. It is a non-starter, so don’t go around spreading FUD about it.

          • kcowing says:
            0
            0

            There is a long-standing treaty that prevents placing nuclear weapons into orbit. That is why no one has been doing it. The treaty was put in place because people were talking about doing it. Check your facts.

          • Guest says:
            0
            0

            Maybe EMP’s That Explode over the USA when N.K. ready to attack?

        • Unko J says:
          0
          0

           Actually the Kim family is far worse than Stalin or Hitler. They imprison “3 Generations” for many infractions. I agree making comparisons is silly – for potentially N. Korea could do far more damage globally than either the Nazis or USSR ever did if they were to opt to use their nuclear weapons. They are on step 17 of 22 on the way to nuclear ICBMs..do we think they plan to stop now?

          • TFSmith1 says:
            0
            0

            “Far worse” than Stalin or Hitler? Really?

            I’m not aware that North Korea has started a world war (Hitler) or ordered the invasions of five neighboring countries (Stalin – Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland).

            This is supposed to be the reality-based community, true?

          • Mader Levap says:
            0
            0

            Hunger, concentration camps, almost complete autarkia, ruthless dictator in power… Better? Not by much.

      • Jafafa Hots says:
        0
        0

        Good news then! That means that if we defeat North Korea we can hire the guy who created their program with slave labor to design our Mars launchers.

        History repeats itself.

        • Ralphy999 says:
          0
          0

          Hmm, I didn’t know that Robert Goddard, the dude who invented the concept of multiple stage rockets, used slave labor on his experiments. Wow, ya learn something new every day. Thanks for the tip!

          • meekGee says:
            0
            0

            The sad part is the Goddard, working in the US, never got the support that he should have been given.

            It was the end of WWII and the German team to make the ICBMs that later became the space launchers.

            I wish it were different, but that’s how it happened.

          • kcowing says:
            0
            0

            Goddard did not have access to slave labor whose lives were considered expendable.

          • TFSmith1 says:
            0
            0

            This is something of a myth, actually; the Atlas and Titan ICBM systems were essentially home-grown US products; the “German Rocket Team” who found an eventual home at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency had little to to with them. Look up Charlie Bossart and the Hi-Roc/Atlas saga, for one, which began as a WW II program for Consolidated (later Convair).

            ABMA was involved in the Jupiter, and there was staff overlap with Thor and the the two liquid-fuelled ICBMs (Minuteman and Polaris/Posiedon were an entirely different technology, of course), but the USAF ICBM systems were not ABMA products.

            Saturn was, but there is a lot to discuss about the influences on how Saturn came about; the LH technology goes back to Centaur and the Lewis/Wright-Pat work on LH for Suntan; very little influence there from ABMA.  

          • Jim Kelly says:
            0
            0

             Not many people know it, but Goddard’s wife sewed the parachutes for his early rockets.

            Never made a penny off it, either.

          • Ralphy999 says:
            0
            0

            I was obviously being facetious (I thought). Werner acknowledged Goddard as inspiration for multiple staged rocket to the moon. I would also point out that Von Braun didn’t create the F-1 rocket engine. He also did not create the Instrument ring for the Saturn V rocket. So what did Werner do? He put his rocket development credentials behind popularizing the concept of going to the moon in film and media. He led the develpment for NASA of the Saturn V booster. But he certainly didn’t design it or invent it. He did as a scientist risk being called a quack the way Goddard was treated in the press and he was awarded the National Science Medal for his efforts in 1975. And deservedly so.

      • Darren E says:
        0
        0

         Lots of hungry, homeless, and very poor people in the USA, too.  But yet you spend 17+ billion per year (most of it wasted, too – see Constellation and the raft of other shuttle replacement programs that were canceled all for nothing). 

        It’s hypocritical to condemn North Korea for this launch (or any other country) when the USA has major problems of it’s own.  Every country does, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do X, Y or Z because of it.

        • Robin Seibel says:
          0
          0

          Not so.  North Korean leaders are effectively conducting a forced starvation of their population.  You really need to get a grip on what life is like for the bulk of the North Korean populace.

        • kcowing says:
          0
          0

          What? Do you have a clue what is going on in North Korea?  The government spends money on giant bronze statues, rockets, and other nonsense while its population starves year after year.

  2. moon2mars says:
    0
    0

    Hmmm mere coincidence that we launched our X-37B ~ 6 hours earlier, methinks not.

    • lars0 says:
      0
      0

      Maximum inclination from the cape is 57 degrees. SSO is 98 degrees. A plane change would be 5.5 km/s of Delta-V. 

      • George says:
        0
        0

        FYI – The Shuttle flight STS 36 went to 62 degrees – albeit to only about 130 miles.  That plane change does use some fuel! 

        I asked one of the crew about the view.  He said it was a bit disappointing for the Northern Hemisphere since it was Feb. – mid winter.

        • Jim Oberg says:
          0
          0

          No plane change involved — it was direct insertion with a steeper azimuth up the East coast. Performance hit comes with more loss of earth rotational impetus bonus.

          • George says:
            0
            0

            Thank you sir. Seems like that flight must have crossed over some land in N. Carolina or SE VA, since I watched a few STS flights at 51.6 degrees going to ISS fly by not very far off the coast of SE VA.  

            Or maybe they just “turned left” after they passed by my house in Hampton! 🙂  Orbital dynamics is not my stuff.  I am glad you showed up.

          • Oscar_Femur says:
            0
            0

            STS-36 flew the only “dogleg” ascent profile of the program, it did in fact “turn left” (with associated performance hit).

      • Stephen Braham says:
        0
        0

        As James says, there is no major hit for this – latitude doesn’t give a max inclination, but a _minimum_ inclination. Anybody can go to SSO from anywhere between 8S and 8N, with a small hit from Earth rotation loss, but no plane change. Going with LESS inclination than your launch latitude is what needs a plane change. That said, it does seem improbable that X37-B is in an orbit that helps it with the N. Korean mission.

  3. Tina Jensen says:
    0
    0

    hmmm wonder what they put up there and I wonder if thats why the dod has confirmed to launching one themselves today. Is it to see what they did? Scary…

    • Mader Levap says:
      0
      0

      Correlation != causation. Of course, every conspiracy theory in existence lives on these kind of conjectures.

  4. Marc Boucher says:
    0
    0

    The launched served three purposes:

    1. Demonstrate they are making progress with their launch capability.
    2. Coincide with a North Korean public milestone for the “people”, domestic politics in other words.
    3. Pressure everyone outside of North Korea to pay attention and negotiate with them.

    From the North Korean perspective this was a win on all counts regardless whether the satellite made it to orbit and/or operates for any length of time.

    From an outside perspective it demonstrates that their capabilities are increasing, though by how much is still yet to be assessed and released. It’s also  disturbing in that you have a totalitarian government that could react aggressively at a moments notice and which is perceived as unstable.

    • Mark_Flagler says:
      0
      0

      I suspect the Norks are more interested in selling missile technology abroad than in nuking their neighbors. A satellite launch is an advertisement for their technology–an advertisement they need since most of their launch attempts have failed. I suspect their driving interest is foreign exchange.

  5. John Gardi says:
    0
    0

    Folks:

    Regardless of the politics, I have objections with the language used in news reports because of the politics.

    As far as I can tell, this was a rocket launching a satellite. We don’t call the first Mercury flights missile launches even though the stages were derived from ICBMs. We don’t call the Falcon 9 a missile launcher even though it would be very capable in that capacity!

    It would be so much nicer to read a story straight off the page without wasting energy on translating.

    tinker

     

    • Jim Oberg says:
      0
      0

      Well, ‘word games’ may be at the heart of the controversy, since the missile comes first, then the orbital applications. Except with NorKorea, since the missile is as yet not operational, every launching cfor ANY purpose has significant technical input to the weaponization of the rocket. Their clumsy attempt to bluff and bamboozle visiting Western journalists last April, allegedly to prove that launching was purely peaceful, was a public relations debacle when it became clear they provided NO evidence the ‘peaceful satellite’ that was displayed was even ON the rocket when they launched, or even if so, whether it was accompanied by a small test RV. They promised to provide such proof, then they never did.

    • Paul451 says:
      0
      0

      “We don’t call the Falcon 9 a missile launcher”

      But try selling one to a non-US customer.

  6. Dewey Vanderhoff says:
    0
    0

    While I am not thrilled that DPRK finally got its aerospace scat together and actually placed a tin can full of Radio Shack – quality transistors in orbit, I’m not losing any sleep nor excavating a backyard bunker. I will neither praise nor  decry this launch , but neither will I deprive the DPRK of a congratulations for achieving this . After all; , it took SpaceX four tries to get a Falcon 1 to orbit as planned. This is, in fact, rocket science . And it’s never easy.

    Global geopolitical response and reaction in the coming days will be interesting to monitor.  I’m of the opinion that there is no way Nort Korea could have been persuaded to not do this. negative psychology or no psych at all, the harder we and China and everyone else  blustered against them launching, the more they would want to do it, and sooner rather than later. I’m not ashamed to admit I am impressed it worked so soon after a spectacular failure just seven months ago. But a statement of truely assertive technology or military prowess?  Hardly.  DPRK has advanced all the way to October 1957.

    I’m sure the US Navy could’ve shot this thing out of the sky with an AEGIS cruiser, and we have several other interceptors. I feel sure this launch did not escape attention nor readiness nor the proper sensors and response mechanisms. it must’ve been determined early on the trajectory was not going near anything undesireable, so we studied it instead. Better to learn from it than to do something wrathful like blow it out of the sky that may have had unpredicatable consequences.  Next time, however….

    This 97.4 ° inclined orbit only 300 mile s high has no really useful s cientific or earth resource potential. A sun-synch orbit would have needed to be 425 miles high at the least. The trajectory was, in fact, the only safe vector open to DPRK launch directors that would not incite an international incident, threading between various sovereignties ( but paralleling the South Koren coast in its early phases. ). That’s really the only orbital vector open to DPRK…south and a little west , slightly retrograde.

    Recall that the only direction Israel could launch its native satellite was directly back west down the length of the open Mediterranean Sea, with a 1000 mph orbital velocity penalty. Who are we to say Israel should not have launched for fear of provocation? or Nigeria, Venezuela,  Pakistan , or even Cuba had it a mind to do so ?

    The next launch by DPRK… THAT’s the one to watch.

    • Jim Oberg says:
      0
      0

      Good point about the orbit, with the disconnect between inclination and altitutde, as far as ‘sun sync’ status is concerned.

      And so far, ONLY the North Koreans have said they’re picking up the radio signals. Anybody else succeeded at that?

    • Stephen Braham says:
      0
      0

      Yup, we’re eventually going to need to need to look at more sophisticated ideas than just hoping somebody doesn’t catch up on tech. The difference between 1940-1960 tech and now is roughly the difference between the Victorian era and 1940-1960 tech. Expecting folks not to find it increasingly easy to build nuclear weapons and rockets is like, in WWII, hoping that Germany wouldn’t come up with the electric lightbulb.

  7. Dewey Vanderhoff says:
    0
    0

    Believe it or not, the excellent satellite  viewing prediction site, Heavens-Above, has the North Korean satellite in its system now . So you can enter your location and determine if this tumbling NK Crude-Sat will be overflying your home. I just ran my Cody WY location and got no observable passes   where sun angle would allow an illumed glimpse against a dark sky. BUT— the bird comes over three times a day , very near the zenith in some cases.

    http://www.heavens-above.com/

    – here are the standard 2-line orbital elements and the contextual parameters:

    1 39026U 12072A 12347.60979993 .00129551 00000-0 79618-2 0 55
    2 39026 097.4072 036.5330 0064702 173.0179 187.1881 15.07721442 94 

    Epoch (UTC): 12 December 2012 14:38:06
    Eccentricity: 0.0064702
    inclination: 97.4072°
    perigee height: 498 km
    apogee height: 588 km
    right ascension of ascending node: 36.5330°
    argument of perigee: 173.0179°
    revolutions per day: 15.07721442
    mean anomaly at epoch: 187.1881°
    orbit number at epoch: 9
    Happy Bird Hunting !

    • Jim Oberg says:
      0
      0

      Since it is in a sun-synch orbit, the ground viewing opportunities do not migrate through the precession period  like ‘regular’ satellites such as ISS or Hubble with their 6 to 8 week precession periods. So observation opportunities seem to be limited. You may NEVER get one. 

  8. Todd Austin says:
    0
    0

    There has been much chest thumping about how this launch represents an elevation of the threat from North Korea. It’s important to remember a few things about North Korea. Kim Jong-un was not originally raised to be the next leader. While his older half brother was being groomed, Jong-un was going to school in Switzerland. Potentially, he has a different outlook on the world that most of his compatriots.

    The launch gives Kim substantial benefits. It helps him to solidify his hold on power and backs up his recent purge of the old guard in the military ranks. It backs him as a strong leader of North Korea, one that must be reckoned with. It makes him, in important respects, an equal with South Korea, which does not have its own launch capability. This can potentially give him the strength he would need in order to begin a true program of liberalization.

    If he were to embark on such a program as a weak leader, there’s every chance that the entrenched power structure would see him as a threat, one they could dominate, and either muzzle him or remove him. From the position of power and authority he now has, he can move to make real change.

    While the US and others may bluster and declare their new penalties against North Korea, I hope they are using the back channel, too, to take advantage of Jong-un’s new power to help him move his country out of this dark age.

  9. Doug Baker says:
    0
    0

    The only real difference between a space launch and a missile launch is  intent. It is the why not the what.  It has been well documented that the military use has been the priority. North Korea is not alone in the area of tech development that could be peaceful or not. I am thinking about Iran uranium enrichment program. 

  10. R Snatch says:
    0
    0

    Why’s the report of North Korea “apparently” placing something in orbit so vague and equivocal?  I think they all have h***-on fantasizing about going to war to reign in the rogue state.  I read that Syria launched several medium range tactical rockets the other day to attack rebel forces and they are preparing poison gas for use. Yet we went to war to stop Iraq from doing this. If you trust the government and the media not to lie at least question their competence.

  11. Guest says:
    0
    0

    How do we not know that these are EMP’S in waiting to drop over the USA when N.K. is ready too drop them?