Tag Archives: Space

NASA’s Juno spacecraft loops into orbit around Jupiter

Jupiter

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – NASA’s Juno spacecraft capped a five-year journey to Jupiter late Monday with a do-or-die engine burn to sling itself into orbit, setting the stage for a 20-month dance around the biggest planet in the solar system to learn how and where it formed.

“We’re there. We’re in orbit. We conquered Jupiter,” lead mission scientist Scott Bolton, with the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, told reporters on Tuesday. “Now the fun begins.”

Juno will spend the next three months getting into position to begin studying what lies beneath Jupiter’s thick clouds and mapping the planet’s gargantuan magnetic fields.

Flying in egg-shaped orbits, each one lasting 14 days, Juno also will look for evidence that Jupiter has a dense inner core and measure how much water is in the atmosphere, a key yardstick for figuring out how far away from the sun the gas giant formed.

Jupiter’s origins, in turn, affected the development and position of the rest of the planets, including Earth and its fortuitous location conducive to the evolution of life.

“The question I’ve had my whole life that I’m hoping we get an answer to is ‘How’d we get here?’ That’s really pretty fundamental to me,” Bolton said.

Jupiter orbits five times farther from the sun than Earth, but it may have started out elsewhere and migrated, jostling its smaller sibling planets as it moved.

Jupiter’s immense gravity also diverts many asteroids and comets from potentially catastrophic collisions with Earth and the rest of the inner solar system.

Launched from Florida nearly five years ago, Juno needed to be precisely positioned, ignite its main engine at exactly the right time and keep it firing for 35 minutes to become only the second spacecraft to orbit Jupiter.

If anything had gone even slightly awry, Juno would have sailed helplessly past Jupiter, unable to complete a $1 billion mission.

The risky maneuver began as planned at 11:18 p.m. EDT as Juno soared through the vacuum of space at more than 160,000 mph (257,500 kph).

NASA expects Juno to be in position for its first close-up images of Jupiter on Aug. 27, the same day its science instruments are turned on for a test run.

Only one other spacecraft, Galileo, has ever circled Jupiter, which is itself orbited by 67 known moons. Bolton said Juno is likely to discover even more.

Seven other U.S. space probes have sailed past the gas giant on brief reconnaissance missions before heading elsewhere in the solar system.

The risks to the spacecraft are not over. Juno will fly in highly elliptical orbits that will pass within 3,000 miles (4,800 km) of the tops of Jupiter’s clouds and inside the planet’s powerful radiation belts.

Juno’s computers and sensitive science instruments are housed in a 400-pound (180-kg) titanium vault for protection. But during its 37 orbits around Jupiter, Juno will be exposed to the equivalent of 100 million dental X-rays, said Bill McAlpine, radiation control manager for the mission.

The spacecraft, built by Lockheed Martin, is expected to last for 20 months. On its final orbit, Juno will dive into Jupiter’s atmosphere, where it will be crushed and vaporized.

Like Galileo, which circled Jupiter for eight years before crashing into the planet in 2003, Juno’s demise is designed to prevent any hitchhiking microbes from Earth from inadvertently contaminating Jupiter’s ocean-bearing moon Europa, a target of future study for extraterrestrial life.

(Editing by Kim Coghill and Andrew Heavens)

Human flights to Mars still at least 15 years off: ESA head

Monitors in the ESOC

By Maria Sheahan and Ashutosh Pandey

DARMSTADT, Germany (Reuters) – Dreaming of a trip to Mars? You’ll have to wait at least 15 years for the technology to be developed, the head of the European Space Agency (ESA) said, putting doubt on claims that the journey could happen sooner.

“If there was enough money then we could possibly do it earlier but there is not as much now as the Apollo program had,” ESA Director-General Jan Woerner said, referring to the U.S. project which landed the first people on the moon.

Woerner says a permanent human settlement on the moon, where 3D printers could be used to turn moon rock into essential items needed for the two-year trip to Mars, would be a major step toward the red planet.

U.S. space agency NASA hopes to send astronauts to Mars in the mid-2030s and businessman Elon Musk, head of electric car maker Tesla Motors, says he plans to put unmanned spacecraft on Mars from as early as 2018 and have humans there by 2030.

The ESA’s Woerner said it would take longer.

A spacecraft sent to Mars would need rockets and fuel powerful enough to lift back off for the return trip and the humans would need protection from unprecedented physical and mental challenges as well as deep-space radiation.

Woerner would like to see a cluster of research laboratories on the moon, at what he calls a “moon village”, to replace the International Space Station when its lifetime ends and to test technologies needed to make the trip to Mars.

That could be funded and operated by a collection of private and public bodies from around the world, he said in an interview at the ESA’s Operations Centre.

“There are various companies and public agencies asking to join the club now, so they want to do different things, resource mining, in situ research, tourism and that kind of stuff. There is a big community interested,” he told Reuters.

“The moon village is a pit stop on the way to Mars,” Woerner said, adding that new 3D printing technology could be used to build material and structures out of rocks and dust, doing away with the cost of transporting everything needed for a mission.

“To test how to use lunar material to build some structures, not only houses, but also for a telescope or whatever, will teach us also how to do it on Mars,” he said.

The ESA, working with Russia, in March sent a spacecraft on a seven-month journey as part of the agency’s ExoMars mission, which will use an atmospheric probe to sniff out signs of life on Mars and deploy a lander to test technologies needed for a rover scheduled to follow in 2020.

Woerner said Europe was looking at ways to lower the cost of launches but did not plan to copy Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is trying to develop relatively cheap, reusable launch vehicles.

“We should not copy. To follow and copy does not bring you into the lead. We are looking for totally different approaches,” Woerner said, adding the ESA was examining all manner of new technologies, including air-breathing engines that do not need to tap into oxygen from a spacecraft’s tank.

(Additional reporting by Reuters TV; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

NASA to set fire in space for science, safety

The Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft departs the International Space Station

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – An unmanned cargo ship pulled away from the International Space Station on Tuesday to stage the first of three planned NASA experiments on how big fires grow in space, an important test for astronaut safety.

Previous experiments in space were limited to the incineration of samples no bigger than an index card, said David Urban, lead researcher for the Spacecraft Fire Experiment, or Saffire.

“We tried for years to find a vehicle and a circumstance where this would work and initially we’d get a ‘not on my spacecraft’ reaction,” Urban said during a NASA TV interview.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration ultimately settled on using an Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo ship, which is designed to burn up in the atmosphere after it departs the space station.

The Cygnus, which departed the space station on Tuesday, was launched from Earth in March with more than 7,000 pounds (3,200 kg) of food, supplies and science experiments for the station, a research laboratory that flies about 250 miles (400 km) above the planet.

The cargo included Saffire, a module containing a 38-inch by 19-inch (97 cm by 49 cm) cotton-and-fiberglass material sample that will be set on fire after Cygnus reaches a safe distance from the station.

The experiment will begin with hot wires igniting the sample. Air flowing through ducts will fan the fire, which is expected to last about 20 minutes.

“One of the big questions is how big will the flame get?” Urban said.

Fire behaves differently outside of Earth’s atmosphere, so scientists want to test whether microgravity will limit flames and what materials will burn.

The question is not academic. In February 1997, an oxygen-generating canister aboard the Russian Mir space station erupted into a searing flame, blocking the crew’s path to an emergency escape ship.

The crew fought the fire with foam extinguishers and water and it eventually burned itself out, leaving a thick residue of soot.

The Saffire experiment will be the largest fire set in space since the accidental blaze on Mir.

Onboard sensors will record temperature, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, while two cameras snap pictures. The data and images will be relayed to ground control teams over the next four to six days. NASA plans two more Saffire experiments aboard future Cygnus spacecraft.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Fiona Ortiz and Steve Orlofsky)

North Korea satellite tumbling in orbit again, U.S. sources say

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – North Korea’s recently launched satellite is once again tumbling in orbit, after stabilizing briefly, according to a U.S. official and other sources.

The satellite update came as a key congressional watchdog agency said the U.S. military had not demonstrated its ability to protect the United States against a possible North Korea missile attack.

Earlier this month North Korea launched what it said was an earth observation satellite but what the country’s neighbors and the United States called a missile test. It was earlier believed to have achieved stable orbit but not to have transmitted data back to Earth.

The U.S. official, and two other sources with knowledge of the issue, said they are less concerned about the function of the satellite than with the technology involved in launching it. They added that the launch was clearly intended to demonstrate North Korea’s ability to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the research arm of Congress, highlighted concerns about missile attacks from North Korea in a report released on Wednesday.

“GMD flight testing, to date, was insufficient to demonstrate that an operationally useful defense capability exists,” the GAO said. GMD is an acronym for a ground-based missile defense system.

The report said that the missile defense system, or the Ground-based Midcourse Defense, had only demonstrated “a partial capability against small numbers of simple ballistic missile threats.”

Ken Todorov, former deputy director of the Missile Defense Agency, said the organization faced a difficult balancing act in meeting the needs of the U.S. military and operating with limited resources for testing.

Last month the Missile Defense Agency conducted a successful test of the ground-based U.S. missile defense system managed by Boeing Co aimed at demonstrating the effectiveness of a redesigned “kill vehicle” built by Raytheon Co.

The test purposely did not include an intercept by a ground-based interceptor but was designed to demonstrate the ability of new “divert thrusters” that were developed by Raytheon to maneuver the warhead.

The report said that while there were benefits in the way the agency was acquiring the kill vehicle, challenges remained.

It added that the Pentagon’s goal to reach 44 ground-based missile defense systems by the end of 2017 was based on a “highly optimistic, aggressive schedule” leading to “high-risk acquisition practices.”

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Andrea Shalal; Editing by Andrew Hay)

U.S. flies F-22 fighters over South Korea after North’s rocket launch

OSAN, South Korea (Reuters) – The United States flew four F-22 stealth fighter jets over South Korea on Wednesday in a show of force following North Korea’s recent rocket launch and ahead of the allies’ joint military drills next month aimed at deterring Pyongyang’s threat.

The flight of the radar-evading F-22s, based in Okinawa, Japan, is the latest deployment of key U.S. strategic military assets to the South after the North defied warnings from world powers and conducted a fourth nuclear test last month.

South Korea and the United States said the North’s rocket launch on Feb. 7 was a long-range missile test and violated U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban the use of ballistic missile technology by the isolated state.

North Korea said it was a satellite launch.

The U.S. military said at the weekend that it had deployed an additional Patriot high-velocity missile interceptor unit to South Korea in response to recent North Korean provocations.

The allies were also expected to begin discussions on the deployment of the advanced Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system.

Last month, the United States flew a B-52 bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons on a low-level flight over the South following the North’s Jan. 6 nuclear test.

The joint military drills scheduled to start in March, which in most years last eight weeks and involve hundreds of thousands of South Korean and U.S. troops, will be the largest ever, according to South Korean officials.

There are 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in the South as part of combined defense with the South’s military of more than 600,000. The North has an army of 1.2 million.

North Korea claims the annual drills are war preparations. South Korea and the United States say the exercises, which have been conducted for years without major incident, are defensive.

(Writing by Jack Kim; Editing by Michael Perry)

Though North Korea satellite not transmitting, rocket payload a concern

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A satellite put into orbit by North Korea at the weekend does not appear to be transmitting, but it is worrying that the rocket that took it there delivered twice the payload of Pyongyang’s previous launch, the head of the U.S. Army’s Missile Defense Command said on Wednesday.

“If you look at the previous launch and the payload it put into orbit … just the increase in weight is I think an important factor,” Lieutenant-General David Mann told a seminar on Capitol Hill organized by the Hudson Institute think tank.

“Whenever you are able to put something into orbit, that’s significant,” Mann said.

“I don’t think it’s transmitting as we speak, but it does reflect a capability that North Korea is trying to leverage in terms of its missile technologies,” he said.

“That kind of capability and then also the collateral usages for that technology are obviously very, very concerning to nations around the world in terms of ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) capabilities.”

Mann said the payload carried was almost twice as large as that carried in North Korea’s previous satellite launch in 2012.

He did not give a figure for the weight of the latest satellite, but South Korean officials have put it at 440 pounds.

Sunday’s launch, which followed Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear bomb test on Jan. 6, was condemned by the United States and countries around the world, which believe it was cover for development of ballistic missile technology.

The United States and South Korea immediately said they would begin formal talks about deploying the sophisticated U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, to the Korean peninsula “at the earliest possible date.”

South Korea had in the past been reluctant to begin formal talks on the Lockheed Martin Corp missile defense system due to worries about upsetting China, its biggest trading partner, which believes it could reduce the effectiveness of its strategic deterrent.

Asked when THAAD might go to South Korea, Mann said there was no timeline for a possible deployment, but added: “I think both governments are going to begin conversations looking at the feasibility of THAAD and we will see what happens from there.”

On Wednesday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said U.S. plans to for a missile shield in South Korea could trigger an arms race in Northeast Asia.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Sandra Maler)

North Korea satellite in stable orbit but not transmitting, U.S. sources say

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – North Korea’s recently launched satellite has achieved stable orbit but is not believed to have transmitted data back to Earth, U.S. sources said of a launch that has so far failed to convince experts that Pyongyang has significantly advanced its rocket technology.

Sunday’s launch of what North Korea said was an earth observation satellite angered the country’s neighbors and the United States, which called it a missile test. It followed Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear test in January.

“It’s in a stable orbit now. They got the tumbling under control,” a U.S. official said on Tuesday.

That is unlike the North’s previous satellite, launched in 2012, which never stabilized, the official said. However, the new satellite was not thought to be transmitting, another source added.

U.S. President Barack Obama spoke with the leaders of South Korea and Japan by phone on Monday night and reassured them of Washington’s support, while also calling for a strong international response to the launch, the White House said.

Obama will also address North Korea’s “provocations” when he hosts the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in California early next week, aides said.

The United States and China, Pyongyang’s only major ally, are negotiating the outline of a new U.N. sanctions resolution that diplomats hope will be adopted this month.

The U.N. Security Council has imposed sanctions against North Korea for its nuclear tests and long-range rocket launches dating back to 2006, banning arms trade and money flow that can fund the country’s arms program.

But a confidential U.N. report, seen by Reuters, concluded that North Korea continues to export ballistic-missile technology to the Middle East and ship arms and materiel to Africa in violation of U.N. restrictions.

The report by the U.N. Security Council’s Panel of Experts on North Korea, which monitors implementation of sanctions, said there were “serious questions about the efficacy of the current United Nations sanctions regime.”

Western diplomats told Reuters that restricting North Korean access to international ports is among the measures Washington is pushing Beijing to accept in the wake of the Jan. 6 nuclear test and the weekend rocket launch.

“PROVOCATIVE, DISTURBING AND ALARMING”

Missile experts say North Korea appears to have repeated its earlier success in putting an object into space, rather than broken new ground. It used a nearly identical design to the 2012 launch and is probably years away from building a long-range nuclear missile, the experts said.

Vice Admiral James Syring, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, told reporters that North Korea’s launch was “provocative, disturbing and alarming,” but could not be equated with a test of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

He said North Korea had never attempted to flight test the KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile it is developing.

Syring said U.S. missile defenses would be able to defend against the new North Korean missile given efforts to improve the reliability of the U.S. system and increase in the number of ground-based U.S. interceptors from 30 to 44.

“I’m very confident that we’re, one, ahead of it today, and that the funded improvements will keep us ahead of … where it may be by 2020,” he said.

The latest North Korea rocket was based on engines taken from its massive stockpile of mid-range missiles based on Soviet-era technology and electrical parts too rudimentary to be targeted by a global missile control regime, experts said.

South Korea’s defense ministry believes the three-stage rocket, named Kwangmyongsong, had a potential range of 7,457 miles, Yonhap news agency reported, similar to that of the 2012 rocket and putting the U.S. mainland in reach.

“I suspect the aim of the launch was to repeat the success, which itself provides considerable engineering knowledge,” said Michael Elleman, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Separately, U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper said on Tuesday that North Korea could begin to recover plutonium from a restarted nuclear reactor within weeks.

Clapper said that in 2013, following its third nuclear test, the North had announced its intention to “refurbish and restart” facilities at its Yongbyon nuclear complex.

“We assess that North Korea has followed through on its announcement by expanding its Yongbyon enrichment facility and restarting the plutonium production reactor,” Clapper said in prepared testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations and Irene Klotz, Susan Heavey and Matt Spetalnick; Writing by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Dean Yates)

North Korea rocket launch may spur U.S. missile defense buildup in Asia

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – North Korea’s latest rocket launch might kick off a buildup of U.S. missile defense systems in Asia, U.S. officials and missile defense experts said, something that could further strain U.S.-China ties and also hurt relations between Beijing and Seoul.

North Korea says it put a satellite into orbit on Sunday, but the United States and its allies see the launch as cover for Pyongyang’s development of ballistic missile technology that could be used to deliver a nuclear weapon.

Washington sought to reassure its allies South Korea and Japan of its commitment to their defense after the launch, which followed a North Korean nuclear test on Jan. 6.

The United States and South Korea said they would begin formal talks about deploying the sophisticated Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, to the Korean peninsula “at the earliest possible date.”

South Korea had been reluctant to publicly discuss the possibility due to worries about upsetting China, its biggest trading partner.

Beijing, at odds with the United States over Washington’s reaction to its building of artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea, quickly expressed “deep concern” about a system whose radar could penetrate Chinese territory.

China had made its position clear to Seoul and Washington, the Foreign Ministry said.

“When pursuing its own security, one country should not impair others’ security interests,” spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement.

TIPPING POINT

But the North Korean rocket launch, on top of last month’s nuclear test, could be a “tipping point” for South Korea and win over parts of Seoul’s political establishment that remain wary of such a move, a U.S. official said.

South Korea and the United States said that if THAAD was deployed to South Korea, it would be focused only on North Korea.

An editorial in the Global Times, an influential tabloid published by the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper, called that assurance “feeble”.

“It is widely believed by military experts that once THAAD is installed, Chinese missiles will be included as its target of surveillance, which will jeopardize Chinese national security,” it said.

Japan, long concerned about North Korea’s ballistic missile program, has previously said it was considering THAAD to beef up its defenses. The North Korean rocket on Sunday flew over Japan’s southern Okinawa prefecture.

Chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters on Monday the Defense Ministry had no concrete plan to introduce THAAD, but added the ministry believed new military assets would strengthen the country’s capabilities.

Riki Ellison, founder of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, said the launch would give Japan momentum to deploy THAAD.

Washington moved one of its five THAAD systems to Guam in 2013 following North Korean threats, and is now studying the possibility of converting a Hawaii test site for a land-based version of the shipboard Aegis missile defense system into a combat-ready facility.

EFFECTIVENESS QUESTIONED

Some experts questioned how effective THAAD would be against the type of long-range rocket launched by North Korea and the Pentagon concedes it has yet to be tested against such a device.

THAAD is designed to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles inside or just outside the atmosphere during their final, or terminal, phase of flight. It has so far proven effective against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.

John Schilling, a contributor to the Washington-based 38 North project that monitors North Korea, said THAAD’s advanced AN/TPY-2 tracking radar built by Raytheon Co could provide an early, precise track on any such missile.

David Wright, co-director of the Global Security Program at the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists, said that while THAAD could not shoot down the type of rocket launched on Sunday its deployment could reassure the South Korean public.

“Much of what missile defense programs are about is reassuring allies and the public,” he said.

SUITABLE SITE IDENTIFIED

One U.S. official said the North Korean launch added urgency to longstanding informal discussions about a possible THAAD deployment to South Korea. “Speed is the priority,” said the official, who asked not to be named ahead of a formal decision.

Renewed missile-defense discussions with the United States could also send a message to Beijing that it needs to do more to rein in North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs, another U.S. official said.

South Korean officials have already identified a suitable site for the system, but it could also be placed at a U.S. base on the Korean peninsula, Ellison said.

THAAD is a system built by Lockheed Martin Corp that can be transported by air, sea or land. The Pentagon has ordered two more batteries from Lockheed.

One of the four THAAD batteries based at Fort Bliss, Texas, is always ready for deployment overseas, and could be sent to Japan or South Korea within weeks, Ellison said.

Lockheed referred all questions about a possible THAAD deployment to the U.S. military.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal, David Brunnstrom and Matt Spetalnick in Washington. Additional reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka and Tim Kelly in Tokyo and Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by Dean Yates and Lincoln Feast)

North Korean rocket puts object into space, angers neighbors, U.S.

SEOUL/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – North Korea launched a long-range rocket carrying what it called a satellite, drawing renewed international condemnation just weeks after it carried out a nuclear bomb test.

Critics of the rocket program say it is being used to test technology for a long-range missile.

South Korea and the United States said they would explore whether to deploy an advanced missile defense system in South Korea “at the earliest possible date.”

The U.S. Strategic Command said it had detected a missile entering space, and South Korea’s military said the rocket had put an object into orbit.

North Korea said the launch of the satellite Kwangmyongsong-4, named after late leader Kim Jong Il, was a “complete success” and it was making a polar orbit of Earth every 94 minutes. The launch order was given by his son, leader Kim Jong Un, who is believed to be 33 years old.

North Korea’s state news agency carried a still picture of a white rocket, which closely resembled a previously launched rocket, lifting off. Another showed Kim surrounded by cheering military officials at what appeared to be a command center.

Isolated North Korea’s last long-range rocket launch, in 2012, put what it called a communications satellite into orbit, but no signal has ever been detected from it.

“If it can communicate with the Kwangmyongsong-4, North Korea will learn about operating a satellite in space,” said David Wright, co-director and senior scientist at the Global Security Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“Even if not, it gained experience with launching and learned more about the reliability of its rocket systems.”

The rocket lifted off at around 9:30 a.m. Seoul time (0030 GMT) on a southward trajectory, as planned. Japan’s Fuji Television Network showed a streak of light heading into the sky, taken from a camera at China’s border with North Korea.

North Korea had notified United Nations agencies that it planned to launch a rocket carrying an Earth observation satellite, triggering opposition from governments that see it as a long-range missile test.

The U.N. Security Council condemned the launch in an emergency meeting on Sunday, and vowed to take “significant measures” in response to Pyongyang’s violations of U.N. resolutions, Venezuela’s U.N. ambassador said.

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power told reporters: “We will ensure that the Security Council imposes serious consequences. DPRK’s (North Korea) latest transgressions require our response to be even firmer.”

The United States and China began discussing a U.N. sanctions resolution after Pyongyang’s Jan. 6 atomic test.

North Korea had initially given a Feb. 8-25 time frame for the launch but on Saturday changed that to Feb. 7-14, apparently taking advantage of clear weather on Sunday.

North Korea’s National Aerospace Development Administration called the launch “an epochal event in developing the country’s science, technology, economy and defense capability by legitimately exercising the right to use space for independent and peaceful purposes”.

The launch and the nuclear test are seen as efforts by the North’s young leader to bolster his domestic legitimacy ahead of a ruling party congress in May, the first since 1980.

North Korea’s embassy in Moscow said in a statement the country would continue to launch rockets carrying satellites, according to Russia’s Interfax news agency.

NEW MISSILE DEFENSE?

South Korea and the United States said that if the advanced missile defense system called Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) was deployed to South Korea, it would be focused only on North Korea.

Seoul had been reluctant to discuss openly the possibility of deploying THAAD. South Korean President Park Geun-hye termed Sunday’s launch an unforgivable act of provocation.

“North Korea continues to develop their nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, and it is the responsibility of our Alliance to maintain a strong defense against those threats,” General Curtis M. Scaparrotti, U.S. Forces Korea commander, said in a statement.

China, South Korea’s biggest trading partner, repeated what it says is “deep concern” about a system whose radar could penetrate its territory.

South Korea’s military said it would make annual military exercises with U.S. forces “the most cutting-edge and the biggest” this year. North Korea objects to the drills as a prelude to war by a United States it says is bent on toppling the Pyongyang government.

The United States has about 28,500 troops in South Korea.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States would work with the U.N. Security Council on “significant measures” to hold North Korea to account for what he called a flagrant violation of U.N. resolutions on North Korea’s use of ballistic missile technology.

Kerry held a telephone conversation with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts on Sunday, according to the State Department.

South Korea’s navy retrieved what it believes to be a fairing used to protect the satellite on its journey into a space, a sign that it is looking for parts of the discarded rocket for clues into the North’s rocket program, which it did following the previous launch.

China expressed regret over the launch and called on all sides to act cautiously to prevent any escalation. China is North Korea’s main ally, but it disapproves of its nuclear weapons program.

Russia, which has in recent years forged closer ties with North Korea, said the launch could only provoke a “decisive protest,” adding Pyongyang had once again demonstrated a disregard for norms of international law.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed the launch with his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida, the foreign ministry said later, with Japan initiating the phone call.

Russia stressed the importance of diplomacy in defusing the tension in northeast Asia during the call, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

NUCLEAR ASPIRATIONS

North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since its first nuclear test in 2006. It has conducted three more atomic tests since then, including the one last month, along with numerous ballistic missile launches.

North Korea has said that last month’s nuclear test, its fourth, was of a hydrogen bomb. The United States and other governments have expressed doubt over that claim.

North Korea is believed to be working on miniaturizing a nuclear warhead to put on a missile, but many experts say it is some way from perfecting such technology.

It has shown off two versions of a ballistic missile resembling a type that could reach the U.S. West Coast, but there is no evidence the missiles have been tested.

(Additional reporting by Jee Heun Kahng in SEOUL; Shinichi Saoshiro, Leika Kihara, Nobuhiro Kubo and Olivier Fabre in TOKYO; Megha Rajagopalan in BEIJING; Morag MacKinnon in PERTH; Louis Charbonneau at the UNITED NATIONS; Matt Spetalnick, David Brunnstrom and Paul Simao in WASHINGTON; Alexandra Winning in MOSCOW; Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Sandra Maler)

U.S. and allies aim to track North Korean rocket launch

SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) – The United States has deployed missile defense systems that will work with the Japanese and South Korean militaries to track a rocket North Korea says it will launch some time over an 18-day period beginning Monday.

China, the North’s sole major ally but opposed to Pyongyang’s nuclear program, appealed for calm.

North Korea has notified U.N. agencies it will launch a rocket carrying what it called an earth observation satellite some time between Feb. 8 and Feb. 25, triggering international opposition from governments that see it as a long-range missile test.

North Korea says it has a sovereign right to pursue a space program. But it is barred under U.N. Security Council resolutions from using ballistic missile technology.

Coming so soon after North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, on Jan. 6, also barred by Security Council resolutions, a rocket launch would raise concern that it plans to fit nuclear warheads on its missiles, giving it the capability to strike South Korea, Japan and possibly the U.S. West Coast.

China has told North Korea that it does not want to see anything happen that could further raise tension, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, describing “a serious situation”, after a special envoy from China visited North Korea this week.

The United States has urged China to use its influence to rein in its neighbor.

Speaking to President Park Geun-hye, Chinese President Xi Jinping said he hoped all parties could bear in mind the broader picture of maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula, and “calmly deal with the present situation”, China’s Foreign Ministry said.

“The peninsula cannot be nuclearized, and cannot have war or chaos,” Xi said, also repeating a call for dialogue.

Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper quoted Pentagon officials as saying that fuelling of the rocket appeared to have begun. It cited satellite footage showing increased activity around the missile launch and fuel storage areas, suggesting preparations for a launch could be completed within “a number of days” at the earliest.

A launch would draw fresh U.S. calls for tougher U.N. sanctions that are already under discussion in response to the nuclear test.

What would likely be an indigenous three-stage rocket will be tracked closely. South Korea and Japan have put their militaries on standby to shoot down the rocket, or its parts, if they go off course and threaten to crash on their territory.

“We will, as we always do, watch carefully if there’s a launch, track the launch, (and) have our missile defense assets positioned and ready,” U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said on Thursday.

“We plan a lot about it. We and our close allies – the Japanese and the South Koreans – are ready for it.”

South Korea has said its Aegis destroyers, its Green Pine anti-ballistic missile radar and early warning and control aircraft Peace Eye are ready.

A U.S. Navy spokesman confirmed the missile tracking ship USNS Howard O. Lorenzen arrived in Japan this week but declined to say if it was in response to the North’s planned launch.

SEARCH FOR CLUES

Boosters and other parts will also be tracked as they splash into the sea, in the hope they can be retrieved and analyzed for clues on Pyongyang’s rocket program.

“Retrieving parts or objects from the launch vehicle are the most important part of the rocket analysis,” said Markus Schiller, a rocketry expert based in Germany.

North Korea said the launch would be during the morning and gave coordinates of where the boosters and payload cover would drop in the Yellow Sea off the Korean Peninsula’s west coast and the Pacific to the east of the Philippines.

The U.S. Navy has sonar equipment and unmanned vehicles that could be used to help recover parts, according to Navy officials. It was not clear if that equipment is in the region.

North Korea last launched a long-range rocket in December 2012, sending what it described as a communications satellite into orbit.

South Korea’s navy retrieved the section of the first stage booster that was part of the fuel tank and one of the four steering engines that confirmed the presence of technology and materials that North Korea had not been known to possess.

Analysis pointed to a launch vehicle capable of carrying a payload of about 500 kg (1,100 lb) more than 10,000 km (6,200 miles), according to South Korea.

A typical nuclear warhead weighs about 300 kg, although North Korea is not believed to have been able to miniaturize a nuclear weapon to that size.

Recovered parts allowed experts to conclude that the second stage booster likely used Soviet-era Scud missile technology and did not use advanced propellant, indicating the rocket was suited for satellite launch but unfit to deliver a warhead.

“My guess is that if you took the rocket they used last time and put a warhead on it you probably would not be able to reach the United States,” said David Wright, co-director and senior scientist at the Global Security Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The search for information on the North’s rocket program will not be easy.

“Some of the more interesting parts, high-efficiency engines and guidance systems, are in the upper stages, and those usually fall far out to sea, at high speed into deep water,” said John Schilling, an aerospace engineer.

“Harder to find than that Malaysian airliner everybody has been looking for all last year.”

(Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal, David Brunnstrom, Ben Blanchard and Elaine Lies; Editing by Tony Munroe, Robert Birsel and Ralph Boulton)