North Korea's satellite is tumbling in orbit

A man walks by a news broadcast about North Korea's satellite launch.
(Image credit: Han Myung-Gu/Getty Images)

The satellite launched by North Korea on Saturday is tumbling in orbit, rendering it useless, a U.S. official said Monday.

Although the payload of the Unha 3 rocket made it into orbit, it has been tumbling ever since, the official told ABC News. North Korea still views the launch as a success, and the official said the fact that the payload was able to make it into orbit is troubling — the technology needed to make that happen is the same necessary to get a ballistic nuclear armed intercontinental missile to the United States, ABC News reports.

The Joint Space Operations Center is tracking the satellite and a rocket booster stage also in orbit, and it could take years for the payload to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere; the JSPOC is still tracking the payload and debris items from a North Korean missile launched in December 2012, ABC News says. No transmission signals were ever detected coming from that satellite.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.