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.
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