The spy satellite that North Korea launched in November is "alive," though it's not clear whether it's spying on anything, experts say. In a blog post Tuesday, satellite expert Marco Langbroek at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands said changes in the Malligyong-1 satellite's orbit show that it is active and under control, Reuters reports. He said data from the US–led Combined Space Operations Center confirmed that the satellite raised the lowest point of its orbit in a series of maneuvers last week, proving it "is not dead, and that North-Korea has control over the satellite—something that was disputed."
On Monday, South Korea's defense minister, Shin Won-sik, said the satellite "shows no signs of functioning and is merely orbiting without activity," Newsweek reports. Langbroek said the remark had not "aged well." "While we indeed currently can not be sure whether the satellite does successfully take imagery, it at least performs orbital maneuvers, so in that sense it is functional," he wrote. "And to do such maneuvers, you need to have the satellite under control." Pyongyang has claimed that the satellite has captured images of military sites in the US and elsewhere.
Langbroek said the maneuvers show that the satellite has an unexpected onboard propulsion system, something not seen in previous North Korean satellites. Jonathan McDowell at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said that while the satellite appears to be able to correct its position in space, it is "much too small" to attack satellites from other countries, reports Reuters. (More North Korea stories.)
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