News Digest

North Korea’s new satellite flew over Super Bowl site

Here’s a bit of Super Bowl trivia: North Korea’s newest satellite passed almost right over the stadium just an hour after it ended. Whatever motives Pyongyang may have about using its rocket launches to develop nuclear-tipped long-range missiles, it now has two satellites circling the Earth, according to NORAD, the North American Aerospace Command, which monitors all satellites in orbit. Both of the Kwangmyongsong, or Shining Star, satellites complete their orbits in about 94 minutes and based on data released by international organisations tracking them, the new one passed almost right over Levi’s Stadium in California about an hour after the Super Bowl ended.

The pass happened at 8:26 p.m., after the game. I would put it down to nothing more than a coincidence, but an interesting one.

Ttech watcher Martyn Williams

“It passed almost directly overhead Silicon Valley, which is where I am and where the stadium is,” tech watcher Martyn Williams said. North Korea claims Sunday’s successful satellite launch was its fourth. The first two have never been confirmed by anyone else, but experts worldwide agree it got one into orbit in 2012 and NORAD, which is hardly a propaganda mouthpiece for Pyongyang, now has both that and the satellite launched on Sunday on its official satellite list. Their main applications, according to Pyongyang, are monitoring the weather, mapping natural resources and forest distributions and providing data that might help farmers improve their crops. World leaders have condemned the launch.