Satellite Data reveals North Korea has viable Satellite Launch Capability

Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates that North Korea has completed a yearlong project to upgrade its main satellite launching station, which is widely believed to be a test site for its intercontinental ballistic missile program, a United States research institute said on Wednesday.

Construction has been underway at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station in Tongchang-ri in northwestern North Korea since late last year.

It includes modifying the gantry tower and launchpad there, which analysts said would give North Korea a facility to launch a longer-range rocket that can carry a heavier payload.

North Korea successfully launched its Unha-3 space launch vehicle from the Sohae facility in December 2012, putting a small satellite into orbit.

The launch increased fears that the country was inching toward acquiring the ability to build an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead.

“North Korea is now ready to move forward with another rocket launch,” the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University said in a report published on its website on Wednesday.

“Should a decision be made soon to do so in Pyongyang, and we have no evidence that one has, a rocket could be launched by the end of 2014.”

North Korea's Sohae satellite launch station. 

Credit: AFP/DigitalGlobe via Getty Images

If such a decision is made, the most likely candidate remains the existing Unha-3 rocket, it said, since “a much larger rocket, reportedly under development, is at least several years from becoming operational.”

The U.S.-Korea Institute is one of the American organizations that monitor North Korea’s nuclear and satellite launching sites using satellite images.

In its latest report, it said that imagery from mid-September showed tanks near the propellant storage buildings at the launchpad for the first time since the 2012 launch. The exact purpose of this activity remains unclear, it said.

A satellite photo of North Korea's Sohae missile launch site provided by 38 North, a website run by Johns Hopkins University. 

The photo shows that the North has carried out an engine test of its KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile in mid-August. 

Credit: Yonhap

The institute said that technicians at the Sohae launch site had also been conducting a series of engine tests for North Korea’s KN-08 road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile over the past couple years.

The KN-08 has never been test-launched, although it has been featured in military parades in Pyongyang.

The U.S.-Korea Institute said it had so far captured no sign of engine tests for a new rocket, bigger than the Unha-3, which North Korea was said to be developing.

North Korea’s launching of a rocket in 2012 and its third nuclear test in February last year prompted the United Nations to tighten sanctions against the country.

Under United Nations resolutions, North Korea was banned from testing technology used to develop ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons.

North Korea has vowed to build more powerful rockets and more sophisticated nuclear weapons as a deterrent against the United States.

Views of Punggye-ri. Images include material from Pleiades CNES 2014. 

Credit: EADS Airbus DS / Spot Image

Rocket tests at the Sohae site, coupled with nuclear tests in Punggye-ri in the northeast, are crucial parts of a North Korean effort to develop a long-range missile that is powerful enough to reach the United States mainland, as well as a nuclear warhead small and advanced enough to be fitted onto such a missile.

North Korea's Rockets and Missile Threat Capability

North Korea's missile program is shrouded in secrecy, which helps the outlaw nation keep the rest of the world guessing.

But Western experts have learned a fair bit about Pyongyang's stable of rockets and missiles over the years by analyzing test flights, satellite photos and other data.

Soviet Origins:
The Hermit Kingdom's missile program is based primarily on Soviet Scuds, which apparently entered the country via Egypt in the 1970s.

North Korea was building its own Scud version, called the Hwasong-5, by the mid-1980s, and moved onto bigger and more powerful missiles after that.

Poor Accuracy:
North Korea's missiles have poor record of accuracy compared to those developed by the United States and other Western powers, experts say.

Pyongyang's Hwasong missiles, for example, can reach targets a few hundred miles away, but with an accuracy of just 0.3 miles to 0.6 miles (0.5 to 1 kilometer).

A missile called the Nodong (or Rodong -1 & -2) can fly 620 miles to 800 miles (1,000 to 1,300 km), but its estimated accuracy is even worse — 1.8 to 2.5 miles (3 to 4 km).

It is believed that these missiles can't reliably hit military targets, but they can certainly strike larger targets such as cities.

Cooperation with Iran:
North Korea has apparently cooperated extensively with fellow pariah nation Iran on rocket and missile technology.

For example, the third stage of Pyongyang's Unha-2 rocket is very similar to, and reported to be based on, the upper stage of Iran's Safir-2 launcher, physicists David Wright and Theodore Postol noted in a 2009 report.

Satellite Launch Success:
North Korea joined the ranks of satellite-launching nations last December, when its Unha-3 rocket launched a small satellite to Earth orbit.

This breakthrough came after three consecutive failures — one in 1998, one in 2009 and another in April 2012.

However, North Korean officials have never admitted to these mishaps, .

For example, they claimed that the Kwangmyongsong-1 ("Bright Star 1") satellite reached orbit in 1998 and then broadcasted patriotic songs into space but there is no evidence for this.

Nuclear Warheads Possible:
North Korea has been ratcheting up its bellicose rhetoric lately, threatening to launch nuclear strikes against Washington, D.C. and other American cities.

While the rogue nation's nuclear-weapons program is thought to be at a relatively primitive stage, Pyongyang may indeed already possess warheads small enough to be carried large distances by a ballistic missile, experts say. But the world have been misled by this kind of rhetoric in the past.

"Having something that's around 1,000 kilograms, or maybe somewhat smaller than that, unfortunately does not seem impossible," Wright reported.

"We don't really know, but I think you have to take seriously that they could well be there."

Most analysts doubt, however, that North Korean missiles are powerful enough to deliver a nuclear weapon to the American mainland.

The tough talk from Pyongyang is primarily bluster aimed at wringing concessions out of the international community and building support for young leader Kim Jong-Un at home, they say.

It also follows the blocking of international bank accounts for Kim Jon-Un and three of his senior generals.

These accounts are thought to contain $$billions belonging to the people of North Korea, allegedly.