FORMOSAT-3 will likely operate for another one to two years even though it has reached its design life expectancy, the National Space Organization (NSPO) said yesterday.
The satellite, also known as the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, the Ionosphere and Climate (COSMIC) program, was a joint venture between Taiwan and various US agencies.
Taiwan provided 80 percent of the funding for the project.
Equipped with six micro-satellites, FORMOSAT-3 was launched on April 15, 2006, at Vandenberg Air Force Base in the US.
National Space Organization -Director-General Chang Guey-shin (張桂祥) said the satellite had been operating for almost five years, which was the satellite’s designed life expectancy.
Nevertheless, the organization estimated the satellite could continue functioning for one or two more years, Chang said.
The NSPO said one of the micro-satellites had malfunctioned, while the other five had experienced problems such as aging batteries and unstable radio occultation antennas. Chang said the satellite could gather an average of 2,000 pieces of -meteorological information a day at the initial stage of its operation. Now, it can only process 1,200.
Chang said the NSPO had planned for the development of FORMOSAT-7 to replace FORMOSAT-3.
The FORMOSAT-7 project is under review at the National Science Council, which must approve the budget plan, he said. Chang said the FORMOSAT-7 project was scheduled for completion by 2015, adding that there would be a period where the nation had to use satellites launched by other countries. Although FORMOSAT-7 will also be a joint venture between Taiwan and the US, Taiwan will only provide 50 percent of the funding, he said.
Statistics from NSPO showed FORMOSAT-3 collected a total of 2.56 million pieces of information on the atmosphere and 2.64 million on the ionosphere.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching