SEOUL: South Korea’s military said on Wednesday (Jul 5) it had retrieved the wreckage of a North Korean spy satellite that plunged into the sea in May after a botched launch and found it had no meaningful military use as a reconnaissance satellite.
The military last month also recovered parts of the rocket used in the failed launch; the booster and payload crashed into the sea soon after takeoff.
“After detailed analysis on major parts of North Korea’s space launch vehicle and satellite which were salvaged, South Korean and US experts have assessed that they had no military utility as a reconnaissance satellite at all,” the military said in a statement.
The South’s military said it had on Wednesday ended salvage operations, which began immediately after the debris splashed down off South Korea’s west coast on May 31. Aircraft, the navy and deep-sea divers were involved in the effort.
It is the first time South Korea has secured a satellite launched by the North, South Korean military experts said.
The initial assessment indicated the reconnaissance capability of the equipment was poor in terms of resolution and tracing targets, said Lee Choon-geun, an expert at South Korea’s Science and Technology Policy Institute.
Yang Uk, a fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, also said “the resolution of the optical device loaded on the satellite was not suitable for military use”.
South Korea’s military tracked the launch of the space vehicle and identified a large, cylindrical piece of debris in the water just hours after the launch, but the object sank to the seabed.
It was recovered two weeks later.
Source: CNA
