North Korea’s first spy satellite is “alive”, space experts said, after detecting changes in its orbit that suggest Pyongyang is successfully controlling the spacecraft – although its capabilities remain unknown.
After two fiery failures, North Korea successfully launched the Malligyong-1 satellite into orbit in November. Pyongyang’s state media claims it photographed sensitive military and political sites in South Korea, the US and elsewhere, but did not release any footage. Independent radio trackers did not detect signals from the satellite.
“But now we can definitely say the satellite is alive,” Marco Langbroek, a satellite expert at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.
From February 19-24, the satellite performed maneuvers to raise its perigee, or the lowest point in its orbit, to 497 km from 488 km (308.8 miles from 303.2 miles), Langbroek said, citing data of the US-led Combined Space Operations Center.
“The maneuver proves that Malligyong-1 is not dead, and that North Korea has control of the satellite – something that has been disputed,” he said.
South Korea’s defense ministry said it had also assessed the satellite to be in orbit, but said it would not comment further on individual analyses. Defense Minister Shin Won-sik said Monday that the satellite showed no signs of other missions or reconnaissance.
“Although we currently cannot be sure whether the satellite is actually successfully taking imagery, at least it is performing orbital motions, so in that sense it is functional,” Langbroek wrote of Shin’s comments.
The maneuver to raise the orbit was a surprise as the presence of a propulsion system on board was unexpected and previous North Korean satellites had never manoeuvred, he said.
“Having the capacity to raise the satellite’s orbit is a big deal,” Langbroek said.
This meant that as long as there was fuel in the satellite, North Korea could extend the satellite’s life by increasing its altitude when it became too low due to orbital decay, he concluded.
Harvard astronomer and orbiter Jonathan McDowell said the satellite appears to be correcting its position in space as it moves to where it was shortly after launch, instead of making a hostile move towards another country’s satellite – a capability for which he said the satellite was “much too small.”
The US, Russia and China, the world’s top space powers, have launched satellites in recent years that are increasingly capable of maneuvering and inspecting other orbiting objects.
But companies and countries often maneuver their satellites to improve the object’s position in orbit. A variety of other reasons to maneuver include evading other satellites or a piece of space debris or – depending on the satellites’ capabilities – wading over a region of interest on Earth.
US Space Command, which tracks all active objects in orbit and sometimes assesses their function, did not immediately comment on the North Korean satellite.
Nuclear-armed North Korea has promised to launch three more spy satellites in 2024.
