South Korean Rocket Takes Off, Satellite Launch Fails
South Korea’s first rocket launch Tuesday failed to push a satellite into its orbit but the flawed mission may still anger rival North Korea, coming just months after the communist nation’s own launch drew international condemnation.
The failure dealt a blow to Seoul’s quest to become a regional space power. It comes against the complex backdrop of relations on the Korean peninsula – and recent signs that months of heightened tension over the North’s nuclear program may be easing.
Also Tuesday, a South Korean newspaper reported that North Korea has invited top envoys of President Barack Obama for the first nuclear negotiations between the two countries under his presidency, but Washington quickly said it has no plans to send the envoys to Pyongyang.
The North gave no immediate reaction to the rocket launch but has said it will watch to see if the U.S. and regional powers refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council. A launch by North Korea in April was suspected to be a disguised test of long-range missile technology and drew a U.N. rebuke.
The North regarded the reaction as discriminatory, saying it fired a satellite into space, although experts say no such satellite has been detected. The North, unlike the South, is banned from any ballistic activity by Security Council resolutions as part of efforts to eliminate its nuclear and long-range missile programs.
U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly spoke in support of South Korea, saying it has pledged to develop rockets for peaceful purposes only, and that there was no indication the launch was “in any way inconsistent with its international obligations and international commitments.”
The launch Tuesday was South Korea’s first involving a rocket from its own territory. It was a two-stage Naro rocket whose first stage was designed by Russia. It lifted off from South Korea’s space center on Oenaro Island, about 290 miles (465 kilometers) south of Seoul.
The rocket was carrying a domestically built satellite aimed at observing the atmosphere and oceans. A South Korean official said they could not trace the satellite in orbit after it separated from the rocket.
“We could not locate our satellite. It seems that communications with the satellite scheduled on Wednesday are unlikely to happen,” Science Ministry official Yum Ki-soo told The Associated Press late Tuesday.
He said South Korean and Russian scientists were analyzing data to try to determine the cause of the failure.
Russia’s Interfax-AVN news agency, citing an unidentified Russian space industry source, said the satellite never reached orbit and problems occurred in the South Korean-built second stage of the rocket.
In Moscow, an official at the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, declined to comment on the fate of the satellite. In joint statements, Roscosmos and the state-controlled Khrunichev company, which made the rocket’s first stage, said that the first stage of the rocket operated as planned.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak called the launch a “half success.”
“We must further strive to realize the dream of becoming a space power,” Lee said, according to his office. Among Asian countries, China has conducted a manned space flight, and Japan and India have also sent rockets carrying satellites into space.
North Korea said it would be “watching closely” for the international response to Seoul’s launch after its own launch drew what it maintains was unfair international condemnation.
South Korean officials said it is inappropriate to compare their launch with the North’s because Seoul’s is for peaceful purposes, in accordance with its membership in international treaties, and was carried out with transparency. “We’ve been doing this openly,” Defense Ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae told reporters.
Kim Tae-woo, a senior analyst of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, said that despite the North’s stance, Tuesday’s launch is unlikely to have major implications on inter-Korean relations.
In recent weeks, the North has become markedly more conciliatory toward both the United States and South Korea. Earlier this month, it freed two American journalists following a trip to Pyongyang by former President Bill Clinton. It has also freed a South Korean detainee, agreed to lift restrictions on border crossings with the South and resume suspended inter-Korean projects in industry and tourism.
Pyongyang also reportedly invited U.S. envoys for talks on its nuclear program. The invitation was extended to Stephen Bosworth, special envoy to North Korea, and nuclear negotiator Sung Kim, Seoul’s JoongAng Ilbo daily reported.
But in Washington, spokesman Kelly said Tuesday that neither Bosworth nor Sung Kim has plans to go to North Korea. He would not say explicitly whether any North Korean invitation was received.
Pyongyang has long sought direct negotiations with Washington about its nuclear program and other issues. The U.S. says it is willing to talk bilaterally to Pyongyang, but only within the framework of six-party talks involving the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan, which North Korea withdrew from in April. By KWANG-TAE KIM Associated Press Writer
Pakistan Nuclear Sites Under Threat
TERRORISTS have attacked three of Pakistan’s military nuclear facilities in the past two years and there is a serious danger that they will gain access to the country’s atomic arsenal, according to a journal published by the US Military Academy at West Point.
The report, written by Shaun Gregory, a security specialist at Bradford University, comes amid mounting fears that the Taliban and al-Qa’ida will breach Pakistan’s military nuclear sites — most of which are in or near insurgent strongholds in the north and west of the country.
The most serious attack was a strike by two suicide bombers on the Wah cantonment ordnance complex, thought to be one of Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons assembly plants, about 32km northwest of Islamabad, in August last year. The incident, which claimed 70 lives, was widely reported but little mention was made of the nuclear risk.
Other attacks included the suicide bombing of a nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha, in central Punjab, in November 2007 and a suicide attack on Pakistan’s nuclear airbase at Kamra, near Wah, on December 10, 2007.
The Pentagon, however, yesterday expressed satisfaction with security at the facilities. Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were “comfortable with the security measures the Pakistani government and the Pakistani military have in place to ensure that their nuclear arsenal is safeguarded”, a Pentagon spokesman said yesterday.
In the Counter Terrorism Centre Sentinel, Professor Gregory wrote that the attacks illustrated “a clear set of weaknesses and vulnerabilities” in Pakistan’s nuclear security regime.
The strikes occurred as Pakistan sought to ramp up its nuclear capability — and as US special forces formulated contingency plans in the event of the country falling to insurgents.
A US Defence Intelligence Agency document revealed in 2004 that Pakistan had a nuclear arsenal of 35 weapons, a figure it planned to more than double by 2020.
In June, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, an al-Qa’ida commander in Afghanistan, suggested that the group would show no hesitation in using nuclear weapons. “God willing … the mujaheddin would take them and use them against the Americans,” he told al-Jazeera television.
Pakistan’s security regime is modelled on the American system and includes the separation of warheads from detonators, which are stored in underground bunkers staffed by highly vetted personnel. Many details of the country’s nuclear program — including the location of many warheads and their exact number — remain unknown.
Because the threat of an invasion by India was seen as a greater danger than Islamic militancy spreading from Afghanistan, the military “chose to locate much of its nuclear weapons infrastructure to the north and west of the country”.
That meant that today, “most of Pakistan’s nuclear sites are close to or even within areas dominated by Pakistani Taliban militants and home to al-Qa’ida”.
There were also concerns that vetting programs may not identify Islamist sympathisers, whose influence extends far up Pakistan’s military hierarchy.
According to Professor Gregory, Islamist militants with ties to the country’s intelligence community have demonstrated that “they have good intelligence about the movement of security personnel”, including military, intelligence and police forces, all of whom have been routinely targeted.
“There is already the well-known case of two senior Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission scientists, Sultan Bashirrudin Mahmood and Chaudhry Abdul Majeed, who travelled to Afghanistan in 2000 and again shortly before 9/11 for meetings with Osama bin Laden himself, the content of which has never been disclosed.”
A US intelligence official told the CQPolitics blog that none of the attacks posed a real threat to the security of the nuclear installations, much Bless the weapons inside. “These are large facilities. It’s not clear that the attackers knew what these bases might have contained,” he said on condition of anonymity.
“In addition, the mode of attack was curious. If they were after something specific, or were truly seeking entry, you’d think they might use a different tactic, one that’s been employed elsewhere — such as a bomb followed by a small-arms assault.” By Rhys Blakely, Mumbai
India Possesses Nuclear Deterrence
Navy chief admiral Sureesh Mehta today said India’s nuclear deterrence capabilities were “proven and capable enough” dismissing a top scientist’s contention that the country needed to carry out further atomic tests as Pokharan II in 1998was not a full success
“As far we are concerned, we go by the views of the scientists. They have given us certain capability and that is capable enough to provide deterrence and they are proven,” Mehta said when asked about the capabilities of India’s nuclear arsenal.
Mehta added that as a nation following the ‘no first strike’ policy, he said that “we are nation that maintains a credible deterrence and that is more than enough to deter anybody.”
Yesterday, K Santhanam, senior scientist and Defence Research and Development Organisation(DRDO) representative for Pokhran II had said that India should not sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty(CTBT) as the country needed to carry out more tests since the Thermonuclear tests in 1998 had failed to produce the desired results.
Desired Atmosphere
You know guys, a friend of mine who’s a technology enthusiast had confided to me during our conversation last week that one of his dreams has always been to have his own movie theater. Henceforth, space constraints have prevented him of the possible installation and setting up such. And so, I suggested that the best alternative for him to possibly enjoy watching movies within his desired atmosphere is to set up his own home theater. And so without much ado, I presented him the best known place which will not only make his kids love it but also enjoy the idea of having it.
The Recently Released Jailbreak
Cell phones have become an appendage in our world today. Everyone has a cell phone, from children to senior citizens. They serve a wide range of roles in our lives — from the necessities and if you were looking to unlock or jailbreak your phone, now you can do it. You know someone is always going to step up to the plate when it comes to something like this, how could they not. It has been confirmed that unlocked phone works with the recently released jailbreak. More than a few users have reported problems but after waiting for several weeks it is no surprise that lots of users have jumped right in.