NASA will confer a medal on an astronomy professor at National Central University (NCU) today in recognition of his achievements on a Saturn exploration space project.
Ip Wing-huen (葉永烜), a professor at NCU’s Graduate Institute of Astronomy, is an astronomer and one of the initiators of the Cassini-Huygens space mission, an international collaboration project involving NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency.
Ip, along with two others involved in the project, Daniel Gautier from the Observatoire Meudon and Toby Owen from the University of Hawaii, has been chosen to receive NASA’s Exceptional Public Service Medal, NCU said in a press release.
Ip’s daughter will accept the award on behalf of her father at a ceremony to be held at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, today, NCU said.
“Everyone has dreams, but realizing them is most important,” Ip said in the press release.
He said that it was because planetary science received scant attention in the early 1980s that a budding astronomer like himself was able to initiate the project.
Studying astronomy is a long path, he said, as he thanked his wife for her support during the time he was committed to the Cassini-Huygens project.
The US$3.26 billion Cassini-Huygens project was launched on Oct. 15, 1997, with the participation of 256 scientists from 18 countries. It is the second-biggest space mission next to the International Space Station program.
The mission comprises the NASA Cassini orbiter and the ESA Huygens probe, and is aimed at studying Saturn and its moons. The Huygens probe landed on Saturn’s moon Titan on Jan. 14, 2005, and began transmitting scientific data, which helped scientists in their study of the atmospheric structure of Titan and the origins of life on earth.
NASA announced on April 18 last year a two-year extension of the mission, known as the “Cassini Equinox mission,” because it seeks answers to new questions that arose from the first orbit of Saturn by the spacecraft Cassini.
Ip, who was born in Macau and was employed as the chief scientist at Taiwan’s National Space Organization in 1991, said investment in scientific research was crucial to sustainable development because it encourages scientific creativity.
“Back in the 1980s, there were only two Titan experts in Europe, but they were already planning to go to Titan. That was because Europe had hundreds of years of scientific development and historical heritage and could therefore invest in what seemed unachievable at the time,” he said.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Taiwan Railways Corp (TRC) today announced that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has been selected as the preferred bidder to operate the Taipei Railway Station shopping mall, replacing the current operator, Breeze Development Co Ltd. Among eight qualified firms that delivered presentations and were evaluated by a review committee, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was ranked first, while Breeze was named the runner-up, the rail company said in a statement. Contract negotiations are to proceed in accordance with regulations, it said, adding that if negotiations with the top bidder fail, it could invite the second-ranked applicant to enter talks. Breeze in a statement today expressed doubts over
RSS