The second satellite constellation jointly developed by Taiwan and the US — Formosat-7/COSMIC-2 — is ready to be transported to the US for its launch, National Space Organization (NSPO) Director-General Lin Chun-liang (林俊良) said yesterday.
Once the US gives the green light, the NSPO would start the process to transport the constellation of six weather satellites, Lin said.
Formosat-7 would be launched by US firm Space X from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the company’s newest rocket, the Falcon Heavy.
It is third in line in the company’s rocket launch schedule this year, according to the NSPO.
The timetable for Formosat-7’s transportation and launch remains uncertain, but based on contractual terms, the US would give the green light to transport the satellite 60 days ahead of its scheduled launch, Lin said.
US personnel late last month visited Taiwan to verify the constellation’s technical details for the final time, he said.
Preparations are under way for the Falcon Heavy’s first commercial launch, scheduled for sometime next month at the earliest, and the results of that launch would affect the timing of subsequent launches, the agency said.
The constellation is to replace Formosat-3, the product of the first space collaboration between Taiwan and the US, with state-of-the-art instruments and equipment to collect meteorological and climate data, it said.
Jointly developed by the NSPO and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the new satellite constellation would be deployed in a low inclination orbit to collect low and mid-latitude ionospheric data.
Each satellite is equipped with three US-built payloads, including a radio occultation receiver that can receive US Global Positioning System and Russian Global Navigation Satellite System signals, the NSPO said.
The data would be transmitted to a ground station and processed into atmospheric and ionospheric weather indicators, such as temperature, pressure, water vapor content and electron density, it said.
The other two payloads are an ion velocity meter, which directly measures the temperature, velocity and incidence angle of ions in the path of each Formosat-7 satellite, and a radio frequency beacon, which measures irregularities in electron densities in the ionosphere.
Formosat-7 would generate double the volume of data generated by Formosat-3 and greatly increase the amount of low-latitude atmospheric and ionospheric data, the agency has said.
The data would be incorporated into the Central Weather Bureau data and forecast system to help improve the accuracy of weather forecasts and climate observation, it said.
In addition to the six satellites, the constellation also includes the Taiwan-built Formosat-7R satellite, dubbed the “wind hunter” by the NSPO.
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