SEOUL, December 20 (AJP) -South Korean space launch startup Innospace has called off the launch attempt of the country's first privately-developed rocket, HANBIT-Nano, after engineers identified a technical issue during final countdown procedures in Brazil.
The launch was scheduled for 9:30 p.m. Friday local time (9:30 a.m. Saturday in Korea) at the Alcantara Space Center, but was halted about an hour before liftoff when an abnormality was detected in a valve used to fill the second-stage liquid methane tank, the company said.
Innospace said it had completed erection of the rocket and checks of telemetry and the flight termination system before beginning oxidizer loading at 6:17 a.m. local time. The countdown was stopped after the valve failed to operate normally following fueling.
A new launch date will be determined in consultation with the Brazilian Air Force within the current launch window, which runs from Jan. 16 through Jan. 22, the company said.
The delay marks the third postponement of the HANBIT-Nano launch. The mission was originally scheduled for Nov. 22 but was first delayed after abnormal signals were detected in avionics equipment. A second delay followed when an issue was found in the cooling system of the first-stage oxidizer supply during final prelaunch checks.
Repeated delays are common in the space industry. In March, SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, postponed the launch of its Falcon 9 rocket multiple times due to weather and technical issues while preparing to send NASA’s SPHEREx space telescope into orbit.
HANBIT-Nano is a two-stage launch vehicle designed to place up to 90 kilograms into a 500-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit. The rocket stands 21.8 meters tall, measures 1.4 meters in diameter, and has a liftoff weight of 18.8 tons. Its first stage is powered by a 25-ton-thrust hybrid rocket engine, while the second stage uses a three-ton-thrust liquid methane engine.
The current mission, dubbed “Spaceward,” aims to deploy 18 kilograms of payload into a 300-kilometer-high orbit, including five small satellites from Brazil and India and three experimental devices. Innospace said the mission will be considered successful once the satellites reach their target orbit and stable communications are confirmed.
Innospace previously conducted a successful test launch of its HANBIT-TLV vehicle in March 2023, validating its hybrid propulsion technology. The company said the HANBIT-Nano mission is a key step toward entering the small-satellite commercial launch services market.
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