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| A drawing of test lunar orbiter under development by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) / Courtesy of MSIT |
By Yoon Sung-won
Korea postponed the launch of its lunar orbiter to 2020 instead of next year, according to the government, Thursday.
The Ministry of Science and ICT said it held a national space development committee meeting a day earlier and decided to give the lunar orbiter development project two more years.
The ministry has conducted a thorough inspection on the progress, risk, and schedule of the orbiter development project earlier this year and concluded that it will be difficult to complete the project by 2018 as originally planned.
"Accepting the opinion of the inspection committee, the ministry has extended the development period to five years from three years, and aims to launch it in December 2020," an MSIT official said.
The ministry said it had to rebuild the main system and body of the orbiter as it weighed about 100 kilograms (kg) more than the original design of 550kg. The work would take three months.
According to the ministry, the inspection committee pointed out technologies such as rocket propellant, navigation control and space communication, which are key to lunar exploration, have not been secured. It also said that the development period has been set too short at three years.
The inspection committee suggested that the ministry give more time to the engineers to improve the design and thoroughly verifiy the systems to increase the possibility of success, rather than rushing to meet the deadline.
"A high-capacity propellant system and lightweight electronics units, which are under development for the lunar orbiter, need more time to complete, considering the nation's current technology capabilities," the official said citing the inspectors.
"The development project also needs extra time to assemble the components and test them for stability following the change of plans to extend the time period of the task and load more equipment onto the orbiter."
The government had planned to load a test orbiter onto a foreign rocket in the first stage of its lunar exploration project. In the second stage, it aims at domestically developing a rocket unit that can reach the surface of the moon and send both an orbiter and a landing module with it.
The science ministry initially decided to launch the test orbiter in 2020 when it began the project in 2007. But later in 2013, the Park Geun-hye administration changed it to 2017 and then postponed it to 2018 again.
As the government decided to delay the completion of its first-stage mission for two more years, the second-stage goal will consequently be put off from the original timeline of 2020.
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