The Korea AeroSpace Administration and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) announced Thursday that the Next-Generation Mid-Size Satellite 2, designed to carry out Earth observation missions, will launch at 3:59 p.m. Korea time on Friday from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The Next-Generation Mid-Size Satellite program is a ground observation satellite project developed to secure a 500-kilogram-class standard platform and transfer technology to the private sector. The second satellite weighs 534 kilograms in total and can identify ground objects as small as 0.5 meters in black and white and 2 meters in color.
The satellite has completed approximately a month of pre-launch preparations, including functional checks and fuel injection, and is now awaiting liftoff aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. One hour after launch, it will separate from the rocket, and 15 minutes later it will attempt its first communication with the Svalbard ground station in Norway.
After entering space, the satellite will undergo an initial operating phase for four months in an orbit of approximately 498 kilometers. From the second half of this year, it will begin full-scale missions alongside the previously launched Satellite 1.
Development was led by Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI). KAI received technology transfer by jointly participating with the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) in the development of Satellite 1 in 2015, and has served as the lead organization since 2018 to complete development of Satellite 2.
The satellite had originally been scheduled to launch in the second half of 2022 using a Russian rocket, but the schedule was delayed by nearly four years due to the fallout from the Russia-Ukraine war. A subsequent plan to launch Satellites 2 and 4 together under a contract with SpaceX was also pushed back when SpaceX shifted to individual launches due to its own circumstances. As a result of these prolonged delays, Satellite 2 will reach space later than Satellite 3, which was launched first aboard Korea's homegrown Nuri rocket last November.
