Space

New Episode of Lost in Space: Arirang 1 Missing in Action

Korea loses contact with Arirang-1 satellite

By Gabriel Gache, Science News Editor

7th of January 2008, 12:22 GMT

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Excuse me just a minute as I try to stop myself from laughing. Alright... so again, how do you lose a multi-million dollar satellite? I mean aren't they suppose to be bulletproof or something? Losing certain things is natural, it happens to all of us; however, this must have been a rather unpleasant experience for South Korea.

Arirang-1, or Arirang I, represents an unmanned artificial satellite launched on December 21st, 1999, by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute with the help of a U.S. rocket. It was the first satellite ever

launched into space by South Korea and that was mostly built by Korean engineers. Previously, South Korea had launched a set of several other satellites, but they have been built by foreign countries.

Built in the South Korean city of Daedeok, the satellite was shipped to the launch site of Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, United States, in three stages by the Korean company First Express International. After the launch of Arirang 1, the satellite Arirang 2 was sent into space in 2006, and a series of other satellites are scheduled to launch in the next years.

Orbiting the Earth from an altitude of about 685 kilometers, the Arirang 2 satellite takes its name from the Korean national song style, arirang. Its orbit enables it to make 14 rotations around the Earth daily, and is expected to maintain the same cycle for 3 years, before decaying orbit. The multi-purpose satellite weighs 765 kilograms and is equipped with high-resolution digital cameras, capable to take pictures of the surface of the planet, with a resolution of 1-meter that can be used for surveillance operations.

However, the Korean Aerospace Research Institute finally announced yesterday that it lost contact with the Arirang-1 satellite, after more than eight years of flawless operation. Equipped with a 6.5 meter resolution digital camera, the fate of the Arirang-1 satellite is mostly unknown. The surveillance satellite most likely suffered a critical malfunction or a misalignment in the solar panels, which could have caused a loss of power. So far, all attempts to restore communication with the spacecraft have been in vain, and it now looks like South Korea might have lost one of its few spacecrafts in Earth's orbit.

TAGS:

satellite | Earth's orbit | Arirang-1 | Arrirang-2 | Korea

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