North Korea still promises to launch a rocket into space this month. But Pyongyang is also having problems: The rocket’s launch window has been extended; and North Korea has admitted its latest rocket is having engine problems. Meanwhile, new satellite images show that the rocket may have been taken off its launch pad.
South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency is reporting that Pyongyang’s Unha-3 multiple-stage rocket — which was being readied for launch at North Korea’s Tongchang-ri launch site as recently as last week — is now gone. A South Korean official told the agency that Pyongyang moved the rocket back to its assembly line in order to fix unspecified “technical problems.” Previously, Pyongyang admitted on Monday there was something wrong with the rocket’s engine. According to North Korea’s state-run news agency KCNA, “scientists and technicians … are pushing forward the preparations for a launch” but they “found technical deficiency in the first-stage fire control engine module of the rocket.” The regime also announced an extension of the launch window until Dec. 29.
This means the rocket, which was scheduled to launch sometime either this week or next, might not blast off until Christmas or after, if at all.
We also don’t know how far along North Korea was in assembling the rocket. South Korean media had previously reported that the rocket had been assembled and ready for fueling before it was taken down. But satellite images released late last week and dissected by North Korea observer Nick Hansenshowed only a partially completed first-stage rocket, fueling speculation the Pyongyang was bogged down by snowfall. But then, that’s what happens when you try and launch a rocket in North Korea in the winter.
None of these signs are good for Pyongyang either, which is attempting its fifth try at launching a satellite into orbit — the four previous attempts have all ended in failure. Or Pyongyang at least claims it’s a satellite program: The United States believes it’s actually a cover for a military weapons program, and has moved four Navy guided-missile destroyers into position in case the rocket threatens Japan or the Philippines. The delay is also a bit embarrassing. Days before, North Korea was assuring the world that it had fixed the technical problems that caused a much-hyped rocket launch in April to fail after 90 seconds and crash into the Yellow Sea.
It’s impossible to know exactly what caused that rocket to fail, but one running theory has it being a problem with either the guidance system or first-stage engine — which sounds kinda like the reason why Pyongyang is delaying its December launch. Earlier this month, Japanese news agency Kyodo News (alas, behind a paywall) reported that U.S. and Japanese officials had completed analyzing telemetry data from the April launch, which indicated one of those two culprits, or even a structural failure.
“The Kyodo report is interesting in part because if U.S. and Japanese experts were poring over the data until October or November to understand the failure, it calls into question whether North Korean engineers could have identified and remedied the problems in time for a December launch,” wrote David Wright, a missile expert with the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
That also tracks with what Victoria Samson, a rocket expert with the Secure World Foundation, told Danger Room last week: The time frame between launches may just be too short for North Korea to have made significant upgrades. But Adm. Samuel Locklear, the U.S. Pacific Command chief, sounded a little freaked out over the possibility that North Korea has “progressively gained better technology over time.”
Still, rocketry is an extraordinarily difficult engineering task. It’s not uncommon for developed countries with advanced rocket programs to fail at it. Fixing one problem could create unintended faults to pop up elsewhere. Worse, North Korea uses old Soviet rocket parts and cobbles them together, and lacks the technical expertise and manufacturing processes needed for rockets to work well. Even if a rocket successfully makes it into space, it doesn’t mean it can hit the United States, or carry much of a payload — let alone a nuclear one.
But as far as technical problems go, we won’t know if Pyongyang has fixed them until it goes ahead and launches the rocket. But that may also be a big “if.” LINK
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