North Korean space officials say they are hard at work on a five-year plan to launch more advanced satellites into orbit by 2020.

But they don’t intend to stop there: they’re also apparently aiming to plant a flag on the moon. A senior official at North Korea’s version of Nasa said that he hopes to see the DPRK’s flag in space “within 10 years”.

“Even though the US and its allies try to block our space development, our aerospace scientists will conquer space,” said Hyon Kwang-il, director of the scientific research department of North Korea’s National Aerospace Development Administration.

According to experts, an unmanned North Korean moon mission isn’t that far-fetched. While the US is the only country to have conducted manned lunar missions, other countries have sent up unmanned spacecraft, and have in that sense “planted” their flags.

Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and expert on international satellites and satellite launches, said “it would be a significant increase in technology, not one that is beyond them.”

Hyon Kwang-il talks exclusively to AP about the country’s five-year space programme Photograph: Kim Kwang Hyon/AP

Hyon said the current five-year plan, drawn up at the behest of the leader Kim Jong-un, focuses on launching more Earth observation satellites and its first geostationary communications satellite which, technologically, would be a major step forward. He said universities are also expanding programmes to train rocket scientists.

“All of this work will be the basis for the flight to the moon,” Hyon said, adding that he would like to see that happen “within 10 years”.

North Korea has marked a number of successes in its space programme and its development of incresingly sophisticated long-range missiles for military use.

On Wednesday, it test-fired what was believed to be a medium-range ballistic missile into the seas off Japan, the fourth reported weapons launch in two weeks.

It launched its latest satellite the Kwangmyongsong 4, or Brilliant Star 4 into orbit in February, just one month after conducting what it claims was its first successful hydrogen bomb test.

The launches brought new international sanctions as nuclear tests and rocket launches, which can have military applications, are banned under United Nations resolutions.

Hyon branded the sanctions as “ridiculous”, adding: “Our country has started to accomplish our plan and we have started to gain a lot of successes. No matter what anyone thinks, our country will launch more satellites.”

He claimed that North Korea’s long-term target is to use its satellites to provide data for crop and forestry assessments and improved communications.

North Koreans cycle past the Three Revolutions Exhibition Hall in Pyongyang. Photograph: Wong Maye-E/AP

Judging from what I have seen, it will take North Korea about a decade or more to get to lunar orbit Markus Schiller

The US made its first lunar flyby in 1959, only six months after its first satellite, Explorer 1, though it took eight more years and several failed attempts to succeed with a lunar orbiter. The USSR made its first moon shot after only three successful Sputnik satellites. Its probe just a year and a half after Sputnik 1 reached the moon, but missed its orbit.

“So it’s not ridiculous to attempt a moon mission early in your space programme,” McDowell said.

“Given their low flight rate of one mission every few years, I think it is hard to see them succeeding in this in the next five years, but possible to see them attempting it,” he added.

North Korea currently has two satellites in orbit, KMS-3-2 and KMS-4. It put its first satellite in orbit in 2012, a feat few other countries have achieved. Its sworn enemy, South Korea, has yet to do so.

Hyon said that as of 27 July , KMS-4 had completed 2,513 orbits, and that within one day after its launch it transmitted 700 photographic images back to Earth. He said it is still working properly and sending data whenever it passes over North Korea, which is four times a day.

Foreign experts have yet to confirm any communications from the satellite. “There’s been no independent evidence that KMS-4 sent data back, but no evidence that it didn’t, either,” McDowell said.

German analyst Markus Schiller, an expert on North Korea’s missiles and rockets, said a geostationary satellite might be a more ambitious goal for the country than a lunar flyby or crash-landing.

“Hitting the moon hard would require less performance power, rocket size than getting into GEO [geostationary equatorial orbit], but it will still be quite a challenge,” he said.

“Judging from what I have seen so far with their space programme, it will take North Korea about a decade or more to get to lunar orbit at best if they really pursue this mission,” he said. “My personal guess, however, is that they might try but they will fail, and we will not see a successful North Korea lunar orbiter for at least two decades, if ever.”

Hyon said claims that North Korea’s space plan is a military programme in disguise are hypocritical, considering the history of space exploration. The US Russia and China all built their space programs out of military technology. “It is the US that militarised space,” he said.