Let the private space companies flourish

The special act on establishing the Korea Aerospace Administration (KASA) — a Korean equivalent of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the United States — passed in the National Assembly on Tuesday. A revision to the Space Development Promotion Act also passed in the legislature to elevate the head of the National Space Committee to the level of the president from prime minister. We welcome the passages, though belated. The special act was passed 14 months after President Yoon Suk Yeol in November 2022 proudly presented a road map to develop our space economy.

KASA is scheduled to launch in Sacheon, South Gyeongsang, in May if everything goes well. The governing People Power Party and the majority Democratic Party have been fiercely feuding over where to place the agency — Sacheon or Daejeon — and under the Ministry of Science and ICT or the president.

The law mandated KASA should be under the Ministry of Science and ICT — and the National Space Committee to be under the jurisdiction of the president to substantially raise its status and allow the president to oversee the committee. The function of research and development will be transferred to the Korea Aerospace Research Institute and the Korea Astronomy & Space Institute, both of which will be placed under KASA.

The establishment of the space agency was the dream of our science and technology circles and related industries after the scope of “space” has expanded to the realms of national defense and diplomacy beyond simply a target for exploration. As a result, a new space era led by private companies like SpaceX has arrived.

SpaceX currently operates a space internet network through a satellite cluster and explores Mars way beyond the moon. Startups cleaning space waste and space companies attempting to land unmanned rockets on the moon are popping up in foreign countries. The United Arab Emirates seeks to explore the moon after learning space technology from our KAIST decades ago, while Luxemburg is leading the exploration of natural resources in space.

But Korea couldn’t. Space development programs changed whenever the governing power changed. Our space experts were even ignored by their foreign counterparts who wondered why Korea didn’t have a space agency yet. A precious few space startups had to move all around the country to find an appropriate site to launch their space vehicles. Korea has become the seventh country to shoot its domestically-produced space vehicle, but still has a long way to go.

KASA signals the start of Korea’s leap toward space. If our researchers and industries cannot pursue their dream due to ferocious political battles for partisan interests, the country has no future. The space agency must help space technology be smoothly transferred to the civilian sector, deregulate the industry, and offer fertile grounds for the space industry to exponentially grow before it’s too late.