Space Exploration Korea

1954 October 4 marks the day the first man made object made it into orbit. Sputnik was 58 centimetres in diameter, weighing 83 kg, it was round with 4 antenna that broadcasted radio signals back to earth, and ran on batteries. 2022 June 21, Korea has finally fired a rocket into space, joining the space club after Russia, the US, France, Japan, China, the UK, India, Israel, Iran and North Korea. More significantly, it also was the 7th country to be able to put a payload of 1 ton into orbit. This is a smaller club, with the other members being the US, Russia, China, Japan, the EU and India. What does this mean for the future of space exploration Team Korea? What are other countries that made the space club doing with their space program?

US, for example, has created “Voyager 1” in 1977 September 5. Voyager1 was launched to conduct closeup studies of Jupiter and Saturn, Saturn's rings, and the larger moons of the two planets. Voyager 1 weighed 721.9 kg, 366 centimetres in diameter. Japan also created a spacecraft called Hayabusa in 2003 May 9. Hayabusa was created to collect a surface sample of a small asteroid called 25143 Itokawa and return the sample to Earth for analysis.

But is Japan only trying to collect information about 25143 It okawa? Why do all nations try to get control of space? Why do all nations study asteroids when they are just floating rocks? This is because asteroids contain immense amounts of valuable resources like platinum, gold, iridium, palladium, osmium, ruthenium, and rhodium. These are very valuable on Earth. There is a reason why they are called “rare elements”. For instance, iridium is used for satellite communications, electronics, and lasers.

For whatever reason, Korea is late to the game. But not that late. We should start to develop technologies for space exploration.

By Justin