4 ms·
I've seen a lot of reporting, including this, which states that this is North Korea's "first" spy satellite. I thought it was well known that NK has performed a
by jerkstate 3y ago
I've seen a lot of reporting, including this, which states that this is North Korea's "first" spy satellite. I thought it was well known that NK has performed at least 2 successful satellite launches previously, KMS-3-2 and KMS-4, which are documented on Wikipedia and tracked on n2yo.com. Does anybody understand the disconnect between the reporting and the evidence of 2 existing spy satellites?
- zamadatix 3y agoOfficially, those were non-spy Earth observation satellites. Not that that means much, but this one is actually labeled a spy satellite. Besides that, KMS-3-2 is known to have gotten to orbit while failing to stabilize and KMS-4 is not known to have sent any signals back.
- jerkstate 3y agoGood points, according to the Wiki page, KMS-4 was initially tumbling and then shown to have stabilized, which seems to indicate that communication was established.
- zamadatix 3y agoNot necessarily, at least in terms of communications back https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/kwangmyongsong-4.htm https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/kwangmyongsong-4.htm. Of course, it's also possible nobody has publicly tried looking at the right time. At the same time, it's also possible it wasn't really a functioning imaging satellite in the first place and was more just another test. Hard to tell when the official source just says whatever sounds most interesting that day.