Formosat-5, Taiwan’s first domestically built satellite, is operating smoothly after its first day in orbit, a National Space Organization (NSPO) official said in the US on Friday.
Communication between the satellite and the ground station in Taiwan, which took place 404 minutes after launch, is smooth, said Chang Ho-pen (張和本), director of the NSPO project to build Formosat-5.
The satellite is able to receive orders from the ground station, while the NSPO can receive transmissions from the satellite, he said.
The miniature satellite made first contact with Earth through the NSPO’s ground antenna in Svalbard, Norway, about 83 minutes after its launch.
Chang said that he hopes the Formosat-5 can begin its mission as soon as possible, but that — now that the satellite is 720km away — further tests and adjustments are needed to ensure optimum performance.
The satellite is expected to begin providing data that can be used for national security, geopolitics, scientific and academic purposes in about two weeks, the NSPO said.
It took six years and NT$5.7 billion (US$188.43 million) to develop the satellite.
The satellite was launched from California on Thursday by US-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX).
The NSPO is part of the National Applied Research Laboratories (NAR), which was established in June 2003 after combining 10 labs into an independent institute.
The Central Weather Bureau’s Weather Information Center head Cheng Chia-ping (程家平) said the high-resolution images taken by Formosat-5 would help to expedite disaster prevention and relief.
Formosat-5 is like a giant digital camera that will take photographs of Earth and send back clear images of the planet, he said.
It can also detect changes before and after an earthquake or a typhoon and relay images of flooding, landslides and mudslides, which would allow for faster and better-informed disaster prevention and response, he added.
However, while the images can be used to help establish a weather database, they cannot be used for weather forecasting, he said, adding that Formosat-5 is an optical remote-sensing satellite, not a weather satellite.
Formosat-5 carries an optical remote-sensing payload and a science payload to execute remote sensing missions and perform science research respectively, the NSPO said.
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