North Korea Joins Spy Satellite Race

North Korea’s boast that it has just “made a crucial test for the development of reconnaissance satellites” is in essence saying: We can spy on you from way up there just like you spy on us.The brief English-language dispatch from the Korean Central News Agency quotes a spokesman saying “the test was aimed at assessing the capability of the satellite photographing and data transmission system and the ground control system.”Just to prove it’s on the verge of possessing a viable spy satellite, KCNA released images of Seoul from on high, claiming “the reliability of photographing and attitude control commands and other ground control over different cameras.” The whole show was “an important success,” KCNA said, on the way to “the final process of gateway to the reconnaissance satellite launch.”KCNA didn’t say so, but the satellite may have been launched on Sunday from the Sohae facility near the Chinese border, when the North fired two mid-range missiles — the latest of more than 60 it has popped off this year. Both of them plopped into waters between the Korean peninsula and Japan after reaching an apogee of 340 miles.North Korean engineers and technicians, though, still aren’t quite ready to launch a full-fledged spy satellite. Rather, the North’s aerospace administration said it would “finish the preparations for military reconnaissance satellite No. 1” by April.Considering that the North’s enemies already have spy satellites, the prospect of a North Korean satellite joining all the others shouldn’t be cause for great alarm. The North in recent years has launched what it claimed were satellites, but they may have been tests of what goes into long-range ballistic missiles.The announcement does, however, fuel concerns that have led Japan to announce a doubling of its military expenditures in five years in the wake of test flights of North Korean missiles over Japan. South Korea routinely denounces such tests as provocations in violation of United Nations sanctions, which the North just as routinely ignores.Not to worry: The North Korean satellite, at least to judge from the test, isn’t nearly as high-grade as the others. The evidence for that assessment appears in the KCNA report that the satellite was equipped with “one panchromatic camera for 20m resolution test.”The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong cited analysts pooh-poohing a resolution of 20 meters as basically nothing compared with American spy satellites capable of reading license plates. The Korea Defense Network’s Lee Il-wook was quoted as saying that the “level of imaging resolution is too crude to be used for any purpose, not to mention surveillance.”Considering the North’s achievements to date, however, it’s quite possible that the version in April may be more sophisticated than the test version. That test comes days after the North said it’s tested “a high-thrust solid-fuel motor” that should replace the liquid-fuel motors in its satellites to date.The solid-fuel motor should make it possible to get a missile on the launch pad before satellites see what’s happening, and also should make it far easier to maneuver the satellite to its target. The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, witnessed that test, though not that of the spy satellite.The North’s need for a solid-fuel motor is vital, considering the speed and detail in which spy satellites have been reporting on construction of North Korean activities. Spies in the sky spot them not only at the Sohae facility but also at Punggye-ri, where the North has conducted six underground nuclear tests — most recently in September 2017.

North Korea Joins Spy Satellite Race

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