North Korea’s first military spy satellite launched last year is functioning normally and able to adjust its orbit, aerospace experts have assessed, counter to the South Korean defense chief’s claim that the satellite is “just orbiting without activity.”

The DPRK has “control over the satellite and can command it to change its orbital altitude,” Marco Langbroek, a lecturer at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of Delft Technical University, told NK News on Wednesday.

The expert cited his observations of the device’s “perigee-raising maneuvers” last week, referring to adjustments to the lowest point in the satellite’s slightly elliptical orbit around Earth.