An independent test flight is scheduled to take place in the Republic of Korea next week, a major step toward jumpingstarting the country's space programme and hitting targets in 6 G networks, spy satellites and even lunar probes.
If all goes well, the three stage NURI rocket designed by the Korean Aerospace Research Institute KARI to eventually placed 1.5 tonnes of payloads into orbit 600 to 800 km above the Earth will next carry a dummy satellite into space on Thursday night.
South Korea s last such booster developed with Russia in 2013 after several failed delays and multiple delayed tests, was launched jointly with India.
The new KARI-SLVII NURI has solely Korean rocket technologies and is the country's first domestic space launch vehicle, said Han Sang-yeop, director of the launcher reliability safety quality assurance division.
Having its own launch vehicle gives a country flexibility of payload types and launch schedule, he told Reuters in an email.
It also gives the country more control over confidential payloads it may want to send into orbit, Han said.
That will be important for North Korea's plans to send surveillance satellites into orbit, in what national security officials have called a constellation of unblinking eyes to check South Korea.
South Korea has remained so far reliant on the United States for satellite intelligence on its northern neighbour.
In 2020, a Falcon 9 rocket from Space X carried South Korea s first military communications satellite from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida into orbit.
NURI is also crucial to South Korean plans to eventually build a satellite-based navigation system and a 6 G communication network.
The program is designed not only to support commercial activities, but also government activity, Oh Seung-hyub, director of launcher propulsion system development division, told a briefing on Tuesday.
South Korea hopes to land a lunar orbiter with the United States and will initiate a lunar orbiter mission on the moon by 2030.
Given problems with previous launches, Han and other planners have prepared for the worst.
The launch day could be changed at the last moment if weather or technical difficulties arise; the craft will have a self-destruct mechanism to destroy it if it is shown it won t reach orbit, and media won't be allowed to observe the test directly.
At least four test launches are planned before the rocket is considered reliable enough to carry a real payload.
According to pre-launch briefing slides, the rocket's planned path would take it southeast of its launch site on the south coast of the Korean Peninsula, threading its way over the ocean on a trajectory aimed at avoiding flying over Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines and other major land masses.
This upcoming launch may be remembered as the hope and achievement of Korean rocketry historically when the launch is successful or not, Han told Reuters.
Space rockets on the Korean Peninsula have been fraught with concerns over their potential use for military purposes, leaving South Korea s efforts lagging more capable programmes in China and Japan.
Modern rocketry in Korea couldn't devote its capacity much to R&D of rockets because of longstanding political issues, Han said.
The United States has viewed North Korea s own satellite launchers as testbeds for nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile technology. North Korea, of course, will not look favourably on South Korea s rapidly developing space capabilities which are far more advanced than those possessed by the North, said James Clay Moltz, a space systems expert at U.S., as it speeds ahead with its own military ballistic missile systems after agreeing with the United States this year to end all bilateral restrictions on them.
There is no concern to military applications for NURI launch vehicle development, said Chang Young-keun, a missile expert at Seoul Aerospace University. Unlike liquid fuel-based nuclear weapon NURI, the Navy s military missiles use solid fuel, which is better for weapons, he added.
South Korea is not seen as a threat by either Russia or China, so it seems unlikely to affect their space programs, which are already highly militarized, Moltz said.
Many space launches are inherently dual, he said, but noted that he hopes NURI s development will not lead to an arms race in space, but instead a safer information race where South Korea has better intelligence to head off any future crisis.