A space race on the Korean Peninsula

This year, South Korea and North Korea have both made strides in their space programmes. South Korea launched its first indigenous rocket, the Nuri, and North Korea tested its Chollima-1 booster

It's been an eventful year for the rival space programmes of Seoul and Pyongyang: on May 25, South Korea for the first time used an indigenous launch vehicle to place a mission-capable satellite in orbit, and a few days later, North Korea launched a new rocket design from a new facility.

These rockets are the result of decades of development. South Korea's Nuri launcher is its first entirely indigenous design, and Seoul has ambitions of placing military and civilian satellites in orbit.

The North has cycled through several dramatically different launchers, and its Chollima-1 booster appears more advanced than anything it has flown to date, although its maiden test in May ended in failure.

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While the programmes lag behind those of their neighbouring Japan and China, both nations have linked rockets to national pride. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called space "a demonstration of the overall national power" and former South Korean President Moon Jae-in said the first launch of the Nuri rocket in 2021 heralded the approach of a "Korea Space Age".

The North's latest push suggests it is serious about deploying operational satellites, said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

"The new phase of their program is clearly moving from an experimental 'get something into orbit' phase to a phase in which operational satellites will be in play," he said. "For now, low orbit recon satellites, but eventually I expect them to launch geostationary communications satellites too."