All nine cube satellites carried into orbit aboard the fifth Nuri rocket on the 7th have established contact with ground stations.
The Korea AeroSpace Administration and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute said on the 13th that all nine secondary payload satellites from the fifth Nuri launch had made contact and were undergoing checks ahead of their missions. The agency and the institute launched the fifth Nuri rocket, South Korea's homegrown launch vehicle, at 12:25 p.m. on the 7th, successfully deploying nine of the 10 cube satellites carried as secondary payloads.
Four satellites — Space Lintec's BEE-1012, the Unmanned Exploration Laboratory's Ulysses, Space&Bean's SDOneSat and Chosun University's orbital verification satellite for space optical communications — achieved two-way contact around 2 p.m. on the 7th. The research institute's second domestic component and parts space verification platform made two-way contact around 2:30 p.m. on the 7th, and Daejeon City's DaejeonSat-1 at about 11 p.m. on the 8th.
Cosmo Works' JAC-007 received a beacon signal on its first contact attempt around 2 p.m. on the 7th and later completed a data downlink, confirming the satellite was in good condition. A beacon reception means a ground station receives a satellite's status signal and location data, while a downlink refers to the satellite sending collected data and images to the ground station. KAIST's GBSat and O&B Space's SLEDGE also received beacon signals and data between the 7th and the 9th.
After completing basic status checks through contact, the secondary payload satellites will go through an early operations phase to verify that all systems are functioning normally before beginning their missions in earnest.
"In this fifth Nuri launch, we established contact with the cube satellites in far less time than during the fourth launch," said Oh Tae-seok, head of the Korea AeroSpace Administration. "This was achieved because the launch vehicle placed the satellites into their target orbits more precisely and provided more accurate satellite position data, which means our technical maturity has risen another notch."