Naro center to become home of Korea's space program

The Naro Space Center, the site of two previous space rocket launches, will be further developed into the home of Korea's space development program as the country embarks on a new five-year plan to build an indigenous space rocket, center operators said Friday.

The center, located 485 kilometers south of Seoul, is again in the media spotlight as the country prepares to launch its Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 (KSLV-1) later in the day.

The launch will be Korea's third attempt to send the Korean-assembled space rocket, also known as Naro-1, into space after two botched attempts in August 2009 and June 2010.

The Naro Space Center currently sits on a 5.11 million square meters of land after its first development plan was completed in June 2010, costing 331.4 billion won ($301 million), according to the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), the state-run operator of the center and also main developer in the KSLV-1 program.

It is equipped with a state-of-the-art mission director center, flight safety control facilities and a launch pad. It also has a meteorological observatory and a rocket assembly facility, along with radar and optical tracking systems that can follow the trajectory of rockets fired.

A second 582.7-billion-won development plan went underway in 2009 to further expand the center and build an engine combustion test facility, which, according to KARI, is an essential component for the development of the country's indigenous rockets.

The KSLV-1 is a two-stage rocket whose Russian-built first stage 170-ton thrust engine was assembled here, with a Korean-made 8-ton thrust second-stage rocket.

The ongoing Naro space program ends early next year, but the National Science and Technology Commission has already approved a new five-year space program that seeks to develop an indigenous 10-ton thrust engine by 2016.

The second five-year program, along with the ongoing Naro development plans, are part of a long-term goal that seeks to develop a 300-ton thrust engine that can carry a 1.5-ton satellite into space by 2021.

To this end, KARI seeks to launch 14 new projects, costing a total of 1.61 trillion won, that will include the construction of a space vehicle test center, as well as a training facility for astronauts.

"By securing a means to train the country's own astronauts, we can prepare for the country's advance into an exclusive club of countries with advanced space technologies," the center said in a press release. (Yonhap)