Final preparations are under way for the launch of Formosat-5, Taiwan’s first domestically developed and built satellite, from a US air base next week, an official said on Friday.
The satellite, which arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California last month, is scheduled to be sent into space on Thursday.
The National Space Organization’s (NSPO) Formosat-5 project director Chang Ho-pen (張和本) said that testing in past weeks indicated that the satellite is functioning normally.
Screengrab from the SpaceX Web site
Although it took some time to integrate Formosat-5 with its launch vehicle, SpaceX’s Falcon 9, work has been successfully completed, Chang said.
Through Formosat-5, Taiwan will show the world that it is capable of independently building satellites, he said.
The satellite was designed by the NSPO and built by more than 50 domestic teams, including teams from CMOS Sensor Inc and National Central University.
The high-resolution optical remote-sensing satellite is the NSPO’s fourth satellite since its space program started in 1991, and the first to be fully produced domestically, from design and manufacture to assembly and testing.
It is to replace Formosat-2, which was retired in August last year.
Formosat-5 is to collect data for scientific research, passing over Taiwan once every two days, the NSPO said.
The satellite is to provide 2m panchromatic and 4m multispectral resolution images for a wide array of applications, including governmental, disaster forecasting and mitigation, national security and environmental observation tasks, as well as international technological exchanges, academic research and international humanitarian assistance, the NSPO said.
The satellite is to carry an Advanced Ionospheric Probe, which can develop weather models in space, monitor ionospheric disturbances and study seismic precursors associated with earthquakes, the organization said.
It took six years and NT$5.7 billion (US$188 million) to develop the 450kg satellite, which is 2.8m high, and 1.6m in diameter, the NSPO said.
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