May 2 (UPI) —
In April 2026, South Korea plans to launch a small cube satellite, roughly the size of a shoebox, aboard the Artemis II test flight as part of preparations for lunar missions. This announcement was made on Friday by both NASA and the Korea Aerospace Agency.
In the upcoming 10-day mission, NASA aims to dispatch four astronauts around the moon, marking the first return trip for humans since Apollo 17 touched down on the lunar landscape back in 1972. Initially, Artemis II was slated for liftoff in 2024.
The Korea Aerospace Agency was established last year.
The K-RadCube, currently under development by the South Korean aerospace company Nara Space Technology Inc., will be installed on the Orion stage adapter situated between the Space Launch System rocket and the manned Orion spacecraft.
NASA said
.
After the satellite is manufactured, the Korean space agency intends to hand it over to NASA by this July.
The 42-pound satellite, autonomously cruising a brief distance away from the launch platform, will observe cosmic radiation and assess its impact on astronauts when it travels through the Van Allen radiation belts over 2,200 miles above our planet.
The belts’ zones are composed of high-energy particles trapped by Earth’s magnetic field.
The cube payloads are “a relatively cost-effective way to potentially expand knowledge of the space environment and enable CubeSat providers to continue to refine development and integration of hardware for missions in space,” NASA said.
Yoon Young-bin, who leads the
Korea Aerospace Research Institute,
said in a news release in Korean: “Through this implementation agreement, we expect closer cooperation between the Korea Aerospace Research Institute and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the field of deep space exploration beyond the moon.”
The space agency plans to make the data obtained from K-RadCube publicly accessible.
“As we expand the scope of space exploration, understanding high-risk space environments will become increasingly important,” Choi Young-jun, deputy director of the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, said. “While experiments can be conducted on Earth to simulate space conditions, this cannot surpass the value of conducting experiments in actual geostationary orbit under various variables.”
The NASA Ames Research Center located in California’s Silicon Valley has initiated its inaugural CubeSat mission.
GeneSat
In December 2006, Ames initiated the deployment of 16 CubeSat spacecraft, which range in dimensions from 1U—equivalent to 10x10x10 centimeters—to 3U. Additionally, they have another dozen CubeSats either under development or scheduled for future launches.
NASA has been collaborating with various countries to incorporate and launch technologies and experiments as part of the agency’s Artemis program,” according to a statement from NASA released recently.
In September, NASA declared a pact with Germany’s space agency, DLR, to launch a CubeSat aboard the Artemis II mission.
In April 2024,
NASA and Japan entered into a pact to develop a pressurized lunar rover.
NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy traveled to South Korea for international cooperation in n July 2024.
Chosun Biz in South Korea
The reporting indicated that the signing of the K-RadCube implementation agreement has been postponed due to the total cessation of new accords between the U.S. and foreign governments following the inauguration of the Trump administration on January 20th.
Last month, at the 2025 Space Symposium held in Colorado Springs, Colorado, KAA Administrator Yoon Young-bin had a meeting with Janet Petro, who serves as the acting director general of NASA.
In 2022, Artemis I reached lunar orbit carrying a dummy passenger.
The initial human lunar landing as part of the Artemis III mission is planned for sometime in 2027.