Nara Space Technology
나라스페이스테크놀로지
Seoul-based microsatellite company founded in March 2015 that designs, builds, and operates 12U and 16U cubesats and runs the EarthPaper satellite-imagery platform. Three satellites are in orbit: Observer-1A (2023), GYEONGGISat-1 (2025), and BusanSat (2026), all launched on SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshares. Listed on KOSDAQ in December 2025 and has since taken on defense work, including a mock-satellite and control-system supply contract with the Agency for Defense Development in April 2026 and, from September 2026, leadership of a KRW 6.7B KRIT program to demonstrate AI-driven autonomous proximity operations in orbit.
Nara Space Technology at a glance
Nara Space Technology is a South Korean defense company based in Seoul, founded in 2015. Makes Autonomous Proximity-Operations Demonstrator, BusanSat, EarthPaper / EP Agent and 2 more systems.
Nara Space Technology Products & Systems
Autonomous Proximity-Operations Demonstrator
OtherKRIT-funded microsatellite that uses an onboard camera and AI to recognize another object in orbit, plan a collision-free approach path, and control its own orbit for inspection and rendezvous missions. Nara Space is prime for design, build, launch, operation, and verification through December 2030.
BusanSat
Other12U, ~12 kg satellite with a polarization camera measuring marine fine dust and atmosphere over Busan port, the west coast, and the Pacific for Busan City, developed with NASA Langley and KASI. Launched on Falcon 9 on May 3, 2026 (local time); the first Korean local-government ocean-observation satellite.
EarthPaper / EP Agent
OtherSatellite-imagery marketplace and analysis platform; EP Agent adds natural-language AI analysis, with a beta released in September 2026 for wildfire damage assessment. Defense-driven demand for AI imagery analysis rose in early 2026.
GYEONGGISat-1 (Observer-1B)
Other16U, ~23 kg climate-monitoring satellite for Gyeonggi Province with a visible and near-infrared multispectral camera, the first Korean satellite led by a local government. Launched on Falcon 9 from Vandenberg on November 28, 2025 (local time).
Observer-1A Earth Observation Cubesat
OtherObserver-1A
Nara Space's first satellite and the first commercial cubesat launched by a Korean company. The 16U (20 x 20 x 40 cm), roughly 24 kg spacecraft carries a multispectral electro-optical camera with 1.5 m native resolution from a 525 km orbit, improved to about 0.5 m with AI super-resolution, over a 14 x 40 km swath. Launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare from Vandenberg on November 11, 2023 (local time), it was first of the 113 satellites on that flight to transmit data and has operated beyond its two-year design life. The same 16U bus flew again as GYEONGGISat-1 (Observer-1B) in November 2025, and the 12U BusanSat followed in May 2026. The Observer bus and its onboard AI underpin the company's ADD mock-satellite contract and the KRIT autonomous proximity-operations demonstrator due by 2030.
In service since 2023