What's new

North korea launches ICBM, test appears success. Second stage drops near Ph

i also see some blackness around the hole, as in something was burning. The rest of the green strip vertical doesnt have this "shade".



This is never 2.4 m.....the guy's torso could be used for reference and unless he is 2.4 from head to waist.....



it's NK rocket?

Perspective :)

Where is the second stage being fished near Philippines?

maybe ...

as I know , it can't be second stage ...
 
With perigee of 505 km it will stay at orbit for very long time even without control.

it will stay at space ... but out of control ...

a satellite without control = piece of ****
 
it will stay at space ... but out of control ...

a satellite without control = piece of ****
I dont think it was intended to do something anyway. What can u do with 100 kg satellite?
 
What can u do with 100 kg satellite?

100kg is plenty for some camera gear and transmission equipment.

SpaceEye-10 OVERVIEW

a100725uppc5F2s315.jpg


General dimension and look are also very similar to what Koreans showed.

800018-north-korea-missile-tour.jpg


Perspective :)

Possibly the diameter of the rocket is meant with the stabilizer fins on the ground, and what they salvaged doesnt have them anymore.

article-2126900-128405CB000005DC-630_634x476.jpg
 
With successful launch, Kim and allies cement rule in North Korea


000_Hkg8103801.jpg



SEOUL (Reuters) - When North Korea's Kim Jong-un commemorates a year of his rule next week, he will be able to declare he has fulfilled the country's long-held dream of becoming a "space power".

Sharing the limelight with the 29-year old will be three civilians who have grown stronger in the past year and have helped Kim exert control over the country's powerful military, which may be an advantage in edging the country closer to an attempt to reopen dialogue with the United States.

Wednesday's successful rocket launch, in which North Korea put a satellite in space for the first time, may have helped cement the position of Kim's uncle Jang Song-thaek and Choe Ryong-hae, the military's top political strategist, as well as Ju Kyu-chang, the 84-year-old head of the country's missile and nuclear program.

"The rocket launch is a boost politically to the standing of Jang Song-thaek and Choe Ryong-hae, who have been around Kim Jong-un," said Baek Seung-joo of the Korea Institute of Defense Analyses, a government-affiliated think tank in South Korea.

While Washington has condemned the rocket launch and called for tougher sanctions on North Korea it was, as recently as February, willing to offer food aid to Pyongyang. At that time it was just over a year since the North shelled a South Korean island, killing civilians, and sank a South Korean warship.

The rise of Jang and Chae especially, once ridiculed as "fake" military men by army veterans, together with the country's aging chief missile bureaucrat, could also mean the renegade state will try its hand at using what is now stronger leverage in negotiations to extract aid and concessions.

jang-sung-taek-2009-1-8-8-3-18.jpg

Kim's uncle Jang Sung-taek

Jang is the brother-in-law of Kim Jong-il and was the chief promoter of his son Kim Jong-un when the elder Kim died on December 17 last year. Jang has further increased his prominence in recent weeks with high-level public appearances, at times in unprecedented proximity to the leader of a country where appearance and formality are rigidly controlled.

Jang accompanied Kim to the rocket command centre to watch the successful launch on Wednesday, the North's state news agency KCNA said.

He is officially a vice chairman of the ruling National Defence Commission and an army general in name only, but is widely believed to be the North's second-in-command in reality.

Jang is considered a pragmatist who is willing to engage both allies and enemies abroad, but also one who understands the challenge of cementing the position of the young and relatively untested grandson of the state's founder.

Baek noted that comments by the North's Foreign Ministry, customarily the channel used by the leadership to wage war of words with the United States, had been tempered recently, indicating Pyongyang may seek a way back into negotiations.

"The North may start to send active indications to the United States and China that it is willing to talk, even to go back to the six-party talks, and to say that its pledge for a missile test moratorium still stands," Baek said.

The six-party talks are aimed at halting North Korea's nuclear program and involve the North, the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. They have been held since 2003 but have stalled since 2008.

CIVILIANS IN MILITARY GARB

Choe is another Workers' Party faithful now donning army uniform. He is head of the General Political Department of the North's 1.2-million strong Army, and is seen as the other major beneficiary of this week's rocket launch.

1105331-5.jpg

Choe Ryong-hae 62 on the left

Jang and Choe are anomalies in a country that claims its roots in the armed struggle against Japan, in that they have not risen through the army's ranks but have received military titles that are said to be a source of ridicule among their opponents.

"Choe and Jang will benefit from the launch because they are the ones who will have undermined the military's influence and strengthened the party's status," said Moon Hong-sik of South Korea's Institute for National Security Strategy, a government-linked thinktank.

The surprise success of Wednesday's launch after a failure in April will be credited to Jang and Choe while Kim will boost his credibility as a leader who gets the job done, said Suh Choo-suk, who was chief national security advisor to former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun.

"I think Kim Jong-un's overall control is already solid. His control will be even stronger through the rocket launch."

The technical aspects of the North's longstanding missile program and possibly its nuclear project are led by a quiet and elderly engineer Ju Kyu-chang, another civilian in army garb.

jsspor.jpg

Ju Kyu-chang 84

Ju has been around since the North first tested its long-range missile technology in the summer of 1998 and is still believed to be in charge of the day-to-day running of the project to develop missiles and possibly nuclear weapons.

Recognition appears to have come relatively late in life for the silver haired technocrat Ju, who is believed to have trained as a metal alloy specialist, as he started to appear in public with the country's top leader only when he turned 70.

Officially, Ju is the head of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea's oddly named Machine-Building Industry Department. He was also named to the National Defence Commission, the country's top military body, after the North's 2009 long-range missile test.

Ju is among the North's most heavily sanctioned individuals, personally named in several government blacklists.

"His rise coincided with the escalation of pace in the North's missile and nuclear programs," said an expert with a South Korean state-run think tank who did not want to be named.

"It could very well have been as a reward for his contribution."

With successful launch, Kim and allies cement rule in North Korea - The China Post


Along with Kim's aunt and the wife of Jang, Kim Kyong-hui, these 5 people are probably the most powerful elites in North Korea

u=3626115834,1772896562&fm=23&gp=0.jpg

A rare picture of Kim Kyong-hui, the young sister of Kim's father
 
10 m resolution. That's useless.

Ye, for military applications pretty much.
However, i can go and speculate a bit, this is civilian off the shelf technology, it is entirely plausibe they obtained some better photo equipment through their intelligence agency, which is spread like a little mafia throughout the world mainly in the effort to obtain foreign currency, but we can never know the true extent.
 
U.S. officials say the satellite put into orbit by North Korea's rocket launch this week is wobbling, but that doesn't necessarily mean the launch itself was unsuccessful.

U.S. analysts say the North Koreans' main goal was not to put a satellite into orbit, but just to see all three stages of their rocket work, to show that the rocket could carry its payload a long distance. That it did. In the last test, in April, the first rocket stages worked as designed, but the third stage failed. Charles Vick, a missile expert at GlobalSecurity.org, credits the North Koreans with learning from their past mistakes.

"They have demonstrated not merely an ability to identify problems, but to resolve those problems and get the total system to work together, all three stages working as a single launch vehicle," he said.

So, the North Koreans are making progress.

Iran's Role

Next question: What, if anything, did this launch mean for Iran?

We know North Korea and Iran have worked together in missile design. Vick says the evidence can be seen by comparing the North Korean Nodong missile with Iran's Shahab missile.

"In every detail, right down to the re-entry vehicles, Nodong-A is the Shahab-3," he says. "The technology is being transferred in both directions, and I think that's what's going on in the nuclear technology, too."

This cooperation may well have contributed to the success of this week's rocket launch.

Theodore Postol, a missile expert at MIT, says the third stage of the North Korean rocket launched this week looks like a comparable stage in a rocket designed by the Iranians.

"They were able to collaborate with equipment given to them or sent to them from North Korea, and at the same time do a lot of the research and engineering development needed to build this upper stage," Postol says.

What this means, Postol thinks, is that this week's North Korean rocket was actually a joint production between North Korean and Iranian engineers.

"While the North Koreans were working on the first stage, these guys were working on the third stage," he says. "So there's no doubt, looking at the technology, you don't need access to the intelligence information to see that these programs are very, very strongly collaborating."

Who's Helping Whom?

Missile analysts think the rocket technology now used by Iran came originally from North Korea. But Jeffrey Lewis, a proliferation expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, thinks nowadays it's the Iranians assisting the North Koreans with missile development.

"The Iranians were doing innovation and change, taking things apart and putting them back together, and it now, to me, looks like the Iranians are better at this than the North Koreans," Lewis says. "And so the North Koreans have gone from being a technology supplier to possibly the recipient of technologies and services back from the Iranians."

This reversal — from North Korea helping Iran to Iran helping North Korea — is important. Remember, a big question is whether this week's rocket launch helped Iran as well as North Korea. Some U.S. officials have worried about that, but Lewis is not convinced.

"I look at this test as a contribution to North Korea's program, but I think it's probably a pretty marginal contribution to the Iranian program," he says.

Of course, Lewis says, every test is a learning experience. Iran may want to develop its own long-range, intercontinental ballistic missile; North Korea's demonstration of such a capability this week should provide data that Iranian engineers can put to good use.

A final point: Successfully testing a long-range missile is one thing; putting a nuclear warhead on the missile is quite another. Experts say both North Korea and Iran are still a long way from being able to do that.

What North Korea's Rocket Launch Tells Us About Iran's Role : NPR
 
I dont think it was intended to do something anyway. What can u do with 100 kg satellite?
Only to test if you can do it....the payload is probably useless...at most send a "ping" to calibrate and test the launch.
 
100kg is plenty for some camera gear and transmission equipment.

SpaceEye-10 OVERVIEW

a100725uppc5F2s315.jpg


General dimension and look are also very similar to what Koreans showed.

800018-north-korea-missile-tour.jpg




Possibly the diameter of the rocket is meant with the stabilizer fins on the ground, and what they salvaged doesnt have them anymore.

article-2126900-128405CB000005DC-630_634x476.jpg

no boy !!!

first stage ( simorgh IRILV ( first stage ) ) = 2.4 m

second stage ( BM 25 musudan - simorgh IRILV ( second stage ) = 1.5 m

third stage ( safir IRILV ( second stage ) ) = 1.25 m
 

Latest posts

Pakistan Affairs Latest Posts

Back
Top Bottom