A small-sized cube satellite developed by South Korea will take part in the Artemis II mission, a U.S.-led crewed Moon exploration program.

The Korea AeroSpace Administration said on Friday it has signed an agreement with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA) to load the K-Rad Cube on the Orion stage adapter, between the Space Launch System rocket and the crewed Orion spacecraft.

Ten billion won, or more than seven-point-one million U.S. dollars, will be spent to develop the 19-kilogram satellite, tasked to measure cosmic radiation and analyze its effects on astronauts as it passes through the Van Allen radiation belts, more than one-thousand kilometers above the Earth.

It will be the first time a South Korea-developed cube satellite is carried by a crewed explorer.

Four astronauts will venture around the Moon during a ten-day flight of the Artemis II program in April 2026.