THE KOREA ECONOMIC DAILY, GLOBAL EDITION

South Korea's micro-satellite startup Nara Space Technology Inc. announced on Friday that it attracted a 20 billion won ($14.5 million) series B investment from ten investors to advance its business development.

Previously, Nara Space raised 13.5 billion won ($9.8 million) through its pre-Series A and series A.

With this new investment, Nara Space expects to launch additional satellites, establish a satellite constellation system and accelerate the development of methane-monitoring satellites.

November last year, the company developed and launched South Korea's first commercial microsatellite for Earth observation Observer 1A.

Since September last year, Nara Space has been working on the Narsha Project to develop a methane-monitoring microsatellite in collaboration with Seoul National University, the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute and Poland's Scanway Space, aiming for a launch in the second half of 2026.

On the same day, Nara Space also released Earth observation images taken by Observer 1A in special wavelength bands, including near-infrared.

The company explained that the images, which include a large farm called Milo Center in Texas, show the health of crops based on the characteristic of healthy leaves to strongly reflect near-infrared light, allowing the assessment of crop growth conditions.

Write to Kang-Ho Jang at callme@hankyung.com