Today is April 5, 2010, the one year anniversary of North Korea’s failed attempt to launch a satellite into orbit. Depending on how you count them, this was either the DPRK’s second or third attempt to launch a satellite. (I favor calling it the third satellite attempt but, as fellow-wonk contributor Josh Pollack points out, North Korea only claimed it was a missile launch.) We have had numerous discussions of the U’nha-2 launch and, I am sure since I have more to say, we will have many more. What I am most interested, however, is the July 4th 2006 launch. I would love to know what that missile looked like. Apparently, the US government knows, presumably because they photographed it on its launch pad. I don’t suppose I can convince them to publish an image of that missile. If they did, we could learn a great deal about how the DPRK is developing their missiles. But perhaps some privately owned hi-res satellite took an image of it, much like they did with the U’nha-2. If they did, please, please, please publish it. (I will have more to say about the implications of knowing what the 2006 “Tae’podong-2” looked like later.)
