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Space

Speculation mounts over North Korean missiles

25 March 2009

JUST how sophisticated is the rocket that North Korea has announced it will launch in April?

The nation has warned shipping away from in the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean between 4 and 8 April, which probably mark the expected splashdown sites of the rocket’s stages (see map).

91av. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has taken these zones and sketched out consistent with them, assuming that it burns kerosene and nitric acid, as the nation’s previous rockets are thought to have done.

It has a mass…

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