Nuri rocket readies for 5th launch

Korea’s homegrown Nuri rocket completed preparations for liftoff on Tuesday, a day before its fifth launch, scheduled for around noon. According to the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA), Nuri arrived at the launchpad at the Naro Space Center in Goheung, Jeonnam-Gwangju Special Metropolitan City, around 7:40 a.m. and was erected and secured at 10:30 a.m. KASA plans to hold its launch management committee around 8:45 a.m. Wednesday to finalize the launch time. Liftoff is planned between 12:23 p.m. and 1:30 p.m., with the flight expected to last about 30 minutes. The fifth launch is intended to build Nuri’s reliability through repeated production and launches using the same design, while placing its largest-ever number of satellites into orbit. Since the fourth launch last year, Hanwha Aerospace has been overseeing the production and assembly process as the rocket’s system integrator. The Nuri will carry 15 satellites on its fifth launch: five NEONSAT swarm microsatellites as the primary payload and 10 CubeSats as secondary payloads. The total payload weight is about 1,071 kilogra