The final text in the series on the North Korean satellite launch will focus on the military and political response of “the southern side”, which had several aspects. The first aspect is the strengthening of the US strategic forces. An aircraft carrier group including the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and the Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine Santa Fe (SSN-763) arrived in Busan before the launch and visited the Navy base on the Jeju-do island after it. It is alleged, that on October 23, in response to such actions, North Korea launched an unidentified ballistic…

North Korea’s successful launch of a satellite on November 21 has led to another wave of speculation both about the satellite’s capabilities and about potential military-technological cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang. This is largely due to the syndrome noted more than once, in which anti-Pyongyang propaganda first comes up with certain clichés and then begins to believe in them. The DPRK is seen as an “Evil State” and thus incapable of real success. Any real achievements are therefore dismissed – “the new housing developments were built to distract the population from economic…

The author finished the text “waiting for the satellite” very timely, because four hours after the article was submitted to the editorial office, the North Korean missile took off, after which what was expected happened as predicted. In this text we will talk about the launch itself and its technical assessments, and in the next text we will talk about the international reaction and the expected cancellation of the inter-Korean military agreement. As reported by the KCNA, at 22 hours 42 minutes and 28 seconds on 21 November 2023, the DPRK’s State Aerospace Engineering Directorate…

On December 1, 2023, the KCNA reported that the DPRK had launched its first military reconnaissance satellite, Malligyong-1, into low Earth orbit, and that the adjustment procedure had been completed. And on December 2, the Satellite Operations Office which will act as an autonomous military intelligence agency, began to perform its tasks. The information received by the new Office will be reported to the relevant executive department of the Central Military…

Discussions that the DPRK’s attempt to launch a satellite will entail the rupture of the inter-Korean military agreement impel the author to remind the audience how the preparation process for this launch is going on. On May 31, North Korea launched its first military spy satellite, Malligyong-1, mounted on a new-type carrier rocket, Chollima-1. According to North Korean media, the rocket crashed into the Yellow Sea after the second stage engine malfunctioned. In July 2023, North Korean satellite debris was retrieved from the Yellow Sea, after which South Korean experts declared that…

In 1981 Mongolia’s “space pioneer,” the astronaut Jügderdemidiin Gürragchaa, made a flight on the Salyut 39 mission. He later became the head of the Russian-Mongolian Friendship Association A great deal has changed in Mongolia since then, not least the political system and the country’s economic and social development priorities. For a long time Mongolia could not afford to dream about having a space program, first because of its struggles to alleviate the acute poverty and other woes caused by “economic liberalization,” and…

Pakistan and India have always been competing with each other since their inception. The two countries took different paths to outdo each other after their independence. Pakistan joined the US bloc in the Cold War, while India opted to be a part of the Non-aligned Movement. Both countries have consistently been contesting for supremacy. This competition led to the nuclearization of South Asia as India developed nuclear weapons with a claim to create a balance of power with China. The former’s nuclear power frustrated Pakistan, and it also developed the nuclear weapon to ensure its sovereignty and integrity. Recently, India successfully landed the Chandrayaan-3 mission on the South Pole of the Moon…

On August 23, 2023, India achieved a historic milestone by successfully landing its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on the moon for the first time. The Vikram lander touched down on the moon’s South Pole six weeks after its launch from Earth. Following the settling of the lunar dust, the Pragyan rover, carried within the Vikram lander, disembarked and started its exploration of the rough south-lunar terrain. The rover’s mission involves investigating craters, collecting crucial data, and capturing images to transmit back to Earth for analysis. To investigate the chemical composition of the lunar soil and identify minerals, Pragyan is equipped…

The instant news arrived on planet Earth that Russia’s Luna 25 spacecraft had crashed into the moon, and 50,000 Western journalists began overheating their keyboards. Any Russian mishap causes a feeding frenzy at Russophobia propaganda mission control, somewhere deep under the White House. And now, Art Technica has proclaimed Russian President Vladimir Putin “a disastrous space leader.” Meanwhile, Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale…

The launch of a North Korean satellite at the end of April 2023 brought the entire world to a standstill, but the South is also competing in the space race, and the author is paying close attention to the progress of the “Nuri” and “Tanuri” programs. A 200-ton South Korea’s KSLV-2 space launch vehicle, also known as Nuri, was launched on June 21, 2022, from the Naro Space Center in Goheung-gun, Jeollanam-do Province. The ROK thus became the seventh country in the world, after Russia, the United States, France, China, Japan and India, to launch a satellite weighing more than one ton into space, on its own. The next launch of Nuri was scheduled for the first half of 2023, and until then Seoul announced its very ambitious plans to create a space command and build de facto dual-purpose missiles. The next step…

This author will discuss the current round in the confrontation between the two Koreas in his next article, and pause for a moment to look at a more significant event. On April 18 Kim Jong-un, General secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea and head of state of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, headed a working party visiting the National Aerospace Development Administration. He was accompanied by technicians, specialists in the field of scientific and technical communications research and senior officers from the Main technical intelligence division of the Korean People’s Army...