Seoul: South Korea on Tuesday postponed a plan to launch a solid-fuel space rocket due to safety reasons, the defense ministry said, pushing back what would have been the first launch of a fully assembled four-stage vehicle. The Mir space rocket was scheduled to lift off at 2 p.m. from a sea barge off the southern coast of Jeju Island, but the launch plan will be rescheduled.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the defense ministry communicated that the planned launch of the solid-fuel space rocket was canceled because a set of issues was detected during final launch preparations. The ministry assured that the rescheduled launch plan would be announced at a later date. The launch would have marked the rocket's first test in a fully assembled four-stage vehicle, following a series of trials in 2022 and 2023 that evaluated partial three-stage configurations. The last launch took place in December 2023.

South Korea has been developing the solid-propellant space launch vehicle since 2021 with the aim of placing small observation and surveillance satellites into a sub-500 kilometer low-Earth orbit. The program is designed to enhance the country's independent spy satellite capabilities for better monitoring of North Korean threats. Solid-fuel rockets, known for their simpler structure compared to liquid-fuel counterparts, can be stored for extended periods, allowing for rapid deployment when needed.

The solid-fuel space vehicle program runs alongside the military's spy satellite launch initiative. As of November last year, this initiative successfully placed five reconnaissance satellites into orbit using SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets. Under the Mir program, South Korea aims to domestically deploy up to 60 small spy satellites into space by 2030, complementing its existing cluster of five larger military spy satellites. This effort is expected to strengthen the country's surveillance network, enabling closer monitoring of adversary targets and reducing reliance on U.S. satellite intelligence.