By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--December 6, 2017
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The missile was fired just before 3 a.m. Wednesday local time from a site about 20 miles north of the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, according to U.S., Japanese and South Korean authorities. It flew for almost an hour, covering about 620 miles, before splashing down in the waters between Japan and the Korean Peninsula inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, which extends 200 nautical miles from its coast.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said while it landed relatively close to its launch site, the “long-range” missile was fired on a very steep trajectory, reaching an altitude of about 2,800 miles—roughly 11 times as high as the international space station. Under Mr. Kim, North Korea has increasingly turned to such so-called lofted-trajectory launches in recent months to test its missiles at extended ranges without having them fly a long horizontal distance. The missile “went higher, frankly, than any previous shots,” U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said. “The bottom line is it’s a continued effort to build a…ballistic missile threat that endangers world peace, regional peace and certainly the United States.” Wednesday’s test demonstrated a trajectory that could put Washington within range of North Korean missiles, said Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif. “If the numbers hold, this test will demonstrate a much further range than ever tested before,” Ms. Hanham said.To get a sense of perspective on that 2,800-mile altitude, You're basically leaving the Earth's atmosphere and entering outer space at about 64 miles. The International Space Station is a little over 200 miles above the surface of the Earth. So we're talking about a very high lob of a missile, and the launch trajectory is crucial because the only way the Norks can hope to reach a target as far away as Washington is to lauch it that high, and with that much force, in order to stick the landing at such a distant spot.
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