North Korean orbital launch vehicle, known in the United States as Taepo-Dong for the location near which it launched. The first launch (Paektusan-1) occurred on 31 August 1998 and used a 24-m-long three-stage rocket: a Nodong missile (first stage), a Soviet Scud missile (second stage), and a solid propellant booster (third stage). Despite North Korea’s claim that the rocket launched the nation’s first satellite successfully into Earth orbit, no foreign sightings of it were ever made of it; apparently the third stage either failed and fell into the Pacific or misfired and put the satellite into a low orbit where it decayed very quickly before it could be detected by foreign observers. It is unclear if the rocket was ever used again.