K-RadCube, a Korean CubeSat aboard NASA's Artemis II mission, has failed to establish normal communication with ground stations. The satellite's mission success remains uncertain, and if the mission fails, the satellite will re-enter Earth's atmosphere and burn up.
Korea's Aerospace Administration (KASA) and its subsidiary Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) said Wednesday that while they received signals during some segments of initial communication attempts with K-RadCube, normal communication was not achieved.
K-RadCube, launched alongside Artemis II on the morning of Tuesday, was deployed at an altitude of approximately 40,000 kilometers at 12:58 p.m. Korean time the same day. KASA immediately attempted to communicate with K-RadCube using overseas ground station antennas and received a weak signal from the Maspalomas ground station in Spain at around 2:30 p.m. that day.
At 9:57 p.m., a ground station in Hawaii received abnormal telemetry data from the satellite. The communication distance at that point was approximately 68,000 kilometers, marking the farthest signal reception by a Korean CubeSat since the Danuri lunar orbiter communicated from a distance of 1.5 million kilometers.
However, K-RadCube was originally placed into an orbit with an apogee of 70,000 kilometers and a perigee of 0 kilometers, requiring it to perform a perigee-raising maneuver. The success of that maneuver has not been confirmed. If the satellite fails to raise its altitude at perigee, it will re-enter Earth's atmosphere and burn up.
KASI plans to continue initial operations until 12:30 p.m. Thursday in cooperation with operating partners KT SAT and Naraspace, keeping open the possibility that the satellite may still be viable.
Kang Kyung-in, head of KASA's Space Science and Exploration Division, said, "K-RadCube, launched aboard Artemis II through international cooperation with NASA, is the first Korean case of receiving a signal from beyond geostationary orbit." He added, "It is encouraging that a CubeSat with private-sector participation joined an international crewed exploration mission, but it is regrettable that we were unable to secure observational data."