North Korea’s first spy satellite launched last November, is “alive” and apparently well, according to a Reuters report.
Experts said that they have been able to detect changes in its orbit, which means that the North Koreans are able to control it. The success of satellite Malligyong-1 comes on the back of two failed previous attempts over six months.
The Reuters report came two days after South Korean defence minister Shin Won-sik said that the satellite was not showing any signs of performing other tasks or engaging in reconnaissance.
“But now we can definitely say the satellite is alive. The manoeuvre proves that Malligyong-1 is not dead, and that North-Korea has control over the satellite – something that was disputed,” Marco Langbroek, a satellite expert at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.
After the launch, North Korea’s state-controlled media had claimed that the satellite had photographed sensitive military and political sites in South Korea, the US and elsewhere. Two months later, rival South Korea launched its first spy satellite using a rocket operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The satellite gave the country the ability to monitor nuclear-armed North Korea.
The US, Russia and China, the world’s top space powers, have in recent years launched satellites increasingly capable of manoeuvring and inspecting other orbital objects. Russia and North Korea have boosted their cooperation over the past year. The Ukraine war and the Russian military’s need for artillery shells and other munitions have drawn Moscow and Pyongyang closer.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un travelled to Moscow for a summit with Putin in September 2023. During his visit, one of the meetings between him and Putin was at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, a Russian spaceport in the far east of the country. This led to speculation that the spy satellite was assisted by Russia.
