Though nominally a civilian agency within the North Korean government, there is considerable bleed-over in technology and direction from the country's military establishment.
The agency has operated three families of launchers, all based upon ballistic missile designs - making these launches sometimes difficult to distinguish from ballistic missile development. In the international environment in which North Korea operates this creates challenges around the validity of publicly-acknowledged program or launch goals. They have successfully launched satellites into orbit on three occasions, out of a total of ten attempts.
In addition to Earth-orbiting satellites, NATA has also spoken of lunar and interplanetary science missions, and even a crewed spaceflight program. However, at the moment, the current level of maturity of their technology and operations leaves these more significant objectives some distance into the future.
