Taiwan and the US have decided to drop plans to build a second set of six small satellites for the Formosat-7 program due to funding issues, the National Space Organization (NSPO) said yesterday.
Following a report by Web site SpaceNews, NSPO Deputy Director-General Yu Shiann-jeng (余憲政) confirmed that the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Ministry of Science and Technology agreed earlier this month not to pursue development of the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate 2 satellites, also known as COSMIC-2B, the second stage of the Formosat-7 program.
The decision was made due to financial difficulties, Yu said.
SpaceNews on Thursday reported that a joint Executive Steering Committee memo said Taiwan and the US were encountering problems funding the payloads, satellites and launch of the COSMIC-2B system.
The memo was signed by NOAA and NSPO officials on Oct. 6 and Monday respectively.
“At the senior-level meetings on June 19 to June 20, 2017, NOAA and NSPO both acknowledged difficulty in finding a viable path forward in exercising the option for COSMIC-2B,” the US-based Web site quoted the memo as saying.
The memo also indicated that launch options for the system were an issue.
The NSPO said in the memo that it would encounter technical, schedule and resource challenges if it wanted to comply with a NASA proposal to launch four of the satellites as secondary payloads on the launch of the agency’s Surface Water Ocean Topography mission, scheduled for April 2021.
Formosat-7 is a collaborative effort between the NSPO and the NOAA, and is a follow-on mission to Formosat-3, the NSPO said.
The first six of the planned 12 satellites, known as COSMIC-2A, have been built and are scheduled for launch as part of the US Department of Defense Space Test Program 2 mission early next month, SpaceNews said.
LEVERAGE: China did not ‘need to fire a shot’ to deny Taiwan airspace over Africa when it owns ‘half the continent’s debt,’ a US official said, calling it economic warfare The EU has raised concerns about overflight rights following the delay of President William Lai’s (賴清德) planned state visit to the Kingdom of Eswatini after three African nations denied overflight clearance for his charter at the last minute. Taiwanese allies Paraguay and Saint Kitts and Nevis, as well as several US lawmakers and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) condemned China for allegedly pressuring the countries. Lai was scheduled to fly directly to Taiwan’s only African ally from yesterday to Sunday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession and his 58th birthday, but Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar suddenly revoked
The number of pet cats in Taiwan surpassed that of pet dogs for the first time last year, reaching 1,742,033, a 32.8 percent increase from 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday, citing a survey. By contrast, the number of pet dogs declined slightly by 1.2 percent over the same period to 1,462,528, the ministry said. Despite the shift, households with dogs still slightly outnumber those with cats by 1.2 percent. However, while the number of households with multiple dogs has remained relatively stable, households keeping more than two cats have increased, contributing to the overall rise in the feline population. The trend
China on Wednesday teased in a video an aircraft carrier that could be its fourth, and the first using nuclear power, while making an allusion to Taiwan and vowing to further build up its islands, as it looks to boost maritime power, secure resources and bolster territorial claims. The video, issued on the eve of the 77th founding anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy, featured fictional officers with names that are homophones of three commissioned aircraft carriers, the Liaoning (遼寧), Shandong (山東) and Fujian (福建). Titled Into the Deep, it showed a 19-year-old named “Hejian” (何劍) joining the group, sparking
BIG YEAR: The company said it would also release its A12 chip the same year to keep a ‘reliable stream of new silicon technologies’ flowing to its customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said its newest A13 chip is to enter volume production in 2029 as the chipmaker seeks to hold onto its tech leadership and demand for next-generation chips used in artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance-computing (HPC) and mobile applications. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, also unveiled its A12 chip at its annual technology symposium in Santa Clara, California. The A12 chip, which features TSMC’s super-power-rail technology to provide backside power delivery for AI and HPC applications, is also to enter volume production in 2029, a year after the scheduled release of the A14 chip. The technology moves
RSS