SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has attempted to launch a spy satellite for the second time but failed, state media have promised to make a third attempt in October.
The Malligyong-1 spy satellite was launched local time Thursday on the newly developed Chollima-1 missile, whose first and second stage flights were normal, the official Korean Central News Agency reported. It said the launch failed “due to an in-flight emergency jet system failure in the third stage.”
The North Korean space agency said a third launch attempt would take place in October after assessing why the launch failed on Thursday. “The cause of the relevant accident is not a major concern in terms of the reliability of the cascade motors and system,” the KCNA report said.
The governments of South Korea and Japan also reported the launch. South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said the rocket was launched from North Korea’s Tongchang-ri area, the site of its main space launch center, around 3:50 a.m. (2:50 p.m. Wednesday ET) and that the launch had failed.
The US strongly condemned the launch as a violation of UN Security Council resolutions banning North Korea from using ballistic missile technology, saying it heightened tensions and threatened regional stability.
The Biden administration is assessing the situation and will take all necessary measures to protect the security of the US and its allies South Korea and Japan, National Security Council spokesman Adrienne Watson said in a statement.
North Korea, which wants to develop a space-based surveillance system to better track U.S. and South Korean military movements, told the Japanese Coast Guard this week that a launch would take place between August 24 and 31.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had promised a second launch attempt after the first ended on May 31 when the missile carrying the spy satellite crashed into the sea shortly after launch.
In an unusually candid admission of the failure, North Korea said at the time that the missile had lost thrust between the first and second stages of launch. North Korea’s top officials later called the launch failure the country’s “most serious” shortcoming in the country’s efforts to advance its weapons programs, according to KCNA.
The South Korean military, which recovered wreckage from both the satellite and the missile that launched it, said last month they had “no military use.”
The US and South Korea conduct annual military exercises that the North sees as rehearsals for an invasion, which the two allies deny.
On Tuesday, North Korea denounced the exercises, saying trilateral agreements reached last week at a first-of-its-kind Camp David summit between the US, South Korea and Japan increased the risk of nuclear war on the Korean peninsula.
A day earlier, KCNA reported that Kim had observed testing of strategic cruise missiles during a widely expected resumption of weapons testing in response to the 11-day exercises between the US and South Korea.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
