North Korean missile launch, seen as warning from Kim Jong-Un to US, captured in rare satellite image

Updated

A one-in-a-million shot from space has captured the moment North Korea launched what experts believe is a short-range ballistic missile.

The spectacular and rare image shows the launch site just moments after the rocket was fired from a known launch site on the coast of the rogue state over the weekend.

This is the view high above the Hodo Peninsula, about 150 kilometres to the east of Pyongyang.

Over the weekend, South Korea's joint chiefs of staff issued a statement saying the North had fired several unidentified projectiles from the north of the city of Wonsan that flew between 70 and 200 kilometres.

The region is well known to North Korea experts like Jeffrey Lewis, from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California.

"It's where North Korea does a lot of missile testing because they fire them out over the ocean and they run up the coast and there are radars there so they can track the missile," he said.

"About 200 kilometres away there's a collection of rocky islands they use for target practice."

As part of Dr Lewis' research into the region, he receives daily satellite imagery of North Korea and was amazed to find that a satellite passing over the region at the exact time the missile was fired managed to capture the aftermath of one of the rocket launches.

This was the image captured at 10:54am local time on May 4, showing the smoke from the missile launch.

The trail left behind is, according to Dr Lewis, further evidence that the projectile was a short-range ballistic missile.

"Because the exhaust is so smoky you know that it is a solid-fuelled missile and indeed several of the images the North Koreans released was of a solid fuelled missile being fired," Dr Lewis said.

Imagery: EU/Sentinel 2

Imagery: Planet Labs Inc

Wonsan W ON S AN

Launch Site L A UNCH SITE

Will Marshall is one of the founders of Planet Labs, the satellite company which captured the image. He tweeted his surprise at having captured the launch.

"North Korean missile trail from space! Damn improbable; but if we take [more than a] million images/day we'll get one in a million shots!"

It was the first missile launch since the North fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in 2017 and comes amid a diplomatic breakdown between the US and North Korea over talks aimed at providing sanctions relief for nuclear disarmament.

For many experts, including Dr Lewis, the use of a short range missile in this test was seen as a warning.

"They didn't break their moratorium because they've only promised to stop launching ICBMs, but at the same time they had stopped launching everything," he said.

"This is them slowly resuming some of the smaller things, letting us know that if negotiations don't resume then there's bigger stuff to come."

Topics: world-politics, government-and-politics, korea-democratic-peoples-republic-of, korea-republic-of

First posted