South Korea on Tuesday set May 24 as the third launch date of its homegrown space rocket Nuri, about a year after its successful test launch.
Nuri, also known as KSLV-II, is set to lift off from the Naro Space Center in the country's southern coastal village of Goheung at 6:24 p.m., the Ministry of Science and ICT said after a launch management committee meeting.
The ministry also set the period from May 25-31 as the launch window for possible schedule changes like weather conditions.
The 200-ton Nuri will carry eight satellites, including the country's second next-generation small satellite and four satellites developed by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, codenamed SNIPE.
The satellites will be delivered to the Naro Space Center around May 1-2 and loaded with the space rocket in the coming three weeks, according to the ministry.
In June last year, South Korea successfully launched the space rocket Nuri in the second attempt to put satellites into orbit, reaching a major milestone in the country's space program.
South Korea has become the seventh country in the world to develop a space launch vehicle that can carry a more than 1-ton satellite, after Russia, the United States, France, China, Japan and India.
In 2021, Nuri successfully flew to its target altitude of 700 kilometers but failed to put a dummy satellite into orbit, as its third-stage engine burned out earlier than expected.
Source: Yonhap News Agency