South Korea successfully tested a wholly domestically-developed rocket engine on Wednesday.<br />It's an encouraging step forward in reaching the long-term goal of launching the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-2 by 2021. <br />Choi Si-young reports. <br /><br />"Engine Ignition "<br /><br />"Launch "<br /><br />According to the Ministry of Science and ICT and Korea Aerospace Research Institute,... the engine fully-combusted for one-hundred-fifty-one seconds,... eleven seconds longer... than what the team considers a successful run.<br /><br /> <br />"On Wednesday at 4 p.m. Korea time, the rocket engine was successfully launched from the Naro Space Center... in Goheung, Jeollanam-do Province."<br /><br />The rocket flew for about ten minutes.<br />It reached a peak altitude of roughly 200 kilometers after some three hundred seconds into flight... before splashing down in international waters off the southeastern coast of Jeju-do Island.<br />The engine,... is nearly twenty-six meters high,... three meters wide,... and weighs in at fifty-two tons.<br /><br />The engine launch is a trial run for the country's second carrier rocket known as Korea Space Launch Vehicle 2 or Nuri, meaning "the world" in ancient Korean.<br />Nuri is a three-stage vehicle developed entirely with homegrown technology using 75 ton force engines... to launch satellites into the orbit in 2021.<br /><br />Wednesday's test launch was for only the second-stage of the Nuri's propulsion,... with the first and third-stage engines to be tested starting early next year.<br /><br />Choi Si-young, Arirang News. <br />
