Although North Korea's launch of a rocket earlier this month has been deemed a success after it completed its mission of placing an object into orbit. The success of the launch stops there if experts are correct.

It has been reported by astronomers, that the dishwasher-sized satellite launched into space is tumbling out of control in its orbit. Radio astronomers also report that the North Korean satellite is not transmitting any signal back to earth. Although by saying it is tumbling out of control, it does not mean that the satellite is careening through space. Rather, it is tumbling on its axis , unable to take images or send or recieve transmissions to correct its problem.

The inactive and out-of-control satellite is not expected to quickly decay in orbit and crash back to earth, but does pose a danger to other satellites, spacecraft and other objects that would share its orbit. This has happened only once before over the skies of Siberia as two communications satellites collided sending out a massive debris field in space that threatened the spacestation in 2009. The threat to the spacestation was minimal however because the orbit of the spacestation was 270 miles lower in orbit than the colliding satellites.

The satellite, claimed by the North Koreans to be a weather and land mapping satellite, would need to have a rock-steady configuration as it travels at over 4 miles per second through space in order to carry out its claimed mission three hundred miles above the earth.

Because of its relatively low orbit around the earth, it and other satellites at this height experience atmospheric drag and are expected to remain in space for only a couple of years before plummeting back to earth or burning up in the atmosphere.