A North Korean satellite was orbiting "normally," officials in Seoul said Thursday, a day after its launch, which was widely condemned as a test of ballistic missile technology, according to dpa. The satellite was circling Earth every 94.5 minutes at 7.6 kilometres per second on an elliptical orbit ranging from 505 to 580 kilometres in altitude, the South Korean Defence Ministry said, quoting data from the North American Aerospace Defense Command. "It is not yet known what kind of mission the satellite is conducting," ministry spokesman Kim Min Seok said. "It usually takes two weeks to evaluate whether a satellite is successful." "For the time being, it is working normally," he said. US broadcaster NBC reported that the satellite appeared out of control. Larger satellites have booster rockets to correct their trajectory. The North Korean satellite, estimated at 100 kilogrammes, is not thought to have this capacity, the Korean Aerospace Research Institute was quoted by South Korea's Yonhap News Agency as saying. Pyongyang had been aiming for a circular orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometres, but the satellite would probably be stuck on its elliptical course, institute spokesman Lee Kyu Su said. The object was launched on a three-stage Unha-3 rocket. The first stage fell into the Yellow Sea while the second stage travelled nearly 2,600 kilometres, including over Japanese territory, before falling into the ocean east of the Philippines. The South Korean navy was to recover a piece of the fuel tank Thursday from the first stage, which it located shortly after it hit the sea, Yonhap quoted Kim as saying. The launch was the second under the new regime of Kim Jong Un after an earlier attempt in April ended in failure when the rocket blew up minutes after takeoff. Japan, the United States, South Korea and other nations said the launches constituted tests of ballistic missile technology in violation of a UN Security Council resolution. But North Korea defended its rocket programme as peaceful, saying it merely aims to put a communications satellite into orbit. The Security Council condemned the launch Wednesday and held a closed-door session to discuss what US Ambassador Susan Rice called a "clear and credible" response.
