CAS500 (Compact Advanced Satellite 500) is a series of Earth observation satellites developed by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI).
Satellites
CAS500-1, (, ), is a prototype class Earth observation satellite that was launched by South Korea at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on 22 March 2021. It is in a Sun-synchronous orbit, inclined by 97.7 degrees or 15 orbits/day.
CAS500-2 was expected to launch in 2022 also on a Russian rocket, but the launch was cancelled after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The satellite was rescheduled to launch together with CAS500-4 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and later moved to another Falcon 9 flight which launched on 3 May 2026 at 7:00 UTC.
CAS500-3 was launched on 26 November 2025 on the South Korean launch vehicle Nuri. CAS500-3 is not an Earth-observation satellite and instead carries three science instruments: a wide-field camera for observing auroras, a plasma and magnetic field monitoring instrument, and a medical 3D bioprinter.
CAS500-4, carrying a wide-area Earth-observation camera, was launched on the Transporter-17 flight of Falcon 9 on 7 July 2026.
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