By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff reporter
GOHEUNG, South Jeolla Province ― The launch pad of the Naro Space Center was covered in white like an ill-timed Christmas. The only thing paler was the expression of Pyun Kyung-bum, the spokesman of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, as he told reporters that the much-anticipated launching of the Korea Space Launch Vehicle I (KSLV-I) had been halted.
Pyun's words were met with a collective moan by the 160 or so journalists gathered at the briefing room, the ``ahs'' and ``ughs'' perhaps loud enough to drain the reaction from a football crowd after a fumbled free kick.
However, it's hard to maintain calmness as an observer, especially for Korean reporters who still are relative newcomers to the space launch experience, when in a circular turn of events ``unexpected'' factors keep popping up again and again and again.
The Korean and Russian engineers involved in the KSLV-I project have indeed been enduring their own, bizarre version of Groundhog Day.
The KSLV-I, carrying a satellite aimed at observing the atmosphere and ocean, was scheduled to blast off from its pad at the Naro spaceport at 5 p.m. Wednesday, in what was to be a second launch following a failed flight the same model last year.
However, engineers aborted the countdown at around 2 p.m. after all three nozzles of the pad's fire prevention system, which disperse chemical retardants used for extinguishing fires from fuel and other flammable liquid spills, malfunctioned and started spraying their contents over the launch pad.
The ``launch window'' for the KSLV-1 launch, notified to the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization, extends until June 19, and officials are likely to rescheduled the launch for sometime around next week.
A previous launch in August last year failed when a KSLV I achieved the desired speed and height, but failed to deliver its payload satellite into orbit. The outcome was particularly disappointing as the launch followed a similar abort sequence after a pressure problem in the rocket engine triggered an automatic shutdown just minutes before the scheduled liftoff.
Dig the archives a little deeper, and KSLV-1's list of delays and setbacks rolls out like toilet paper.
The launch was originally scheduled for late 2005, but was postponed six times before the science ministry settled on Aug. 19 last year. The aforementioned engine problems then moved the actual launch to Aug. 24, which ended in failure.
Russia's Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, which is providing the core technologies for the Korean rocket project, struggled to deliver the ground-test vehicle (GTV), a mock-up rocket to be used for testing, which contributed to the delay of the launch.
And the completion of the Naro spaceport took longer than expected after a devastating earthquake in southwest China in 2008 resulted in the late delivery of some key parts.
The Khrunichev Center designed and developed the KSLV-1 first-stage, which holds the rocket engine and liquid-fuel propulsion system. Prior to last year's launch, most of the questions surrounding the KSLV-I were related to whether the rocket would achieve the desired speed and height, which was entirely up to the ability of the Russians.
However, most of KSLV-I's problems since then have Korean fingerprints on them. The Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), the country's space agency, designed the KSLV-1 second-stage, the part that holds and releases the satellite. Of course, the malfunction of the second-stage caused the satellite to burn up in the atmosphere as it crashed back toward Earth.
And now, the new source of trouble seems to be the fire prevention system.
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