Taiwan’s first domestically built rocket, the HAPITH-1, is to be launched in Taitung County on Thursday, developer Taiwan Innovative Space Inc (TiSPACE), said yesterday.
The rocket is to be launched at 6am in the county’s Nantian Village (南田), home to a community of Aboriginal Paiwan people, TiSPACE said, adding that the ceremony would include a traditional Paiwan blessing.
The HAPITH-1 was to be launched on Dec. 27 last year, but TiSPACE called the launch off due to protests by the Aboriginal community.
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Innovative Space Inc
Since then, representatives of TiSPACE and government agencies have visited Nantian and talked with the residents, who have agreed to the launch on condition that their safety will not be at risk, village Warden Kao Fu-yuan (高富源) said.
The rocket’s launchpad has already been built and other preparations are being put in place, TiSPACE chairman Chen Yen-sen (陳彥升) said.
The rocket is expected to take 10 minutes to reach an altitude of 250km before falling back into the ocean between Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島), said Chen, a former NASA researcher.
If the launch is successful, it would break the world record for the highest altitude reached by a rocket with a hybrid engine, which is currently 120km, he said.
The hybrid-propellant rocket costs one-10th of a conventional rocket, which makes it highly competitive, Chen added.
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:
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