South Korea's multipurpose satellite, Arirang Two, is circling the earth in a six-hundred-85 kilometer orbit after blast-off Friday afternoon.

The Korea Aerospace Research Institute said the satellite made its first contact with the ground control station in Daejon for about 13 minutes at around eleven p.m. Friday, some seven hours after its launch. Earlier the satellite made contact with the Malindi satellite telemetry station in Kenya.

Arirang Two lifted off aboard a Russian rocket shortly after four p.m. from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome some eight-hundred kilometers northeast of Moscow.

Equipped with a high-resolution multi-spectral camera that can recognize a car on the street from space, the satellite will circle the earth 14 and a half times a day, transmitting pictures of the Earth’s surface after a two-month test.

The satellite is expected to help Korea make timely updates on geographical changes and assist in the search for natural resources.

It took seven years to build the satellite at the cost of two-hundred-63 billion won or two-hundred-76 million U.S. dollars.

With the successful launching of the new satellite, the nation now has a total of nine satellites in space.