Taiwan's space program making contributions: NSPO

Taiwan's space program, which is aimed at the development of scientific-research satellites, has made the nation an exporter of scientific data, according to the National Science Council.

In response to China's space launch yesterday, officials of the National Space Program Office (NSPO), which is under the National Applied Research Laboratories, stressed that Taiwan's space program is aimed in a different direction than that of China.

According to NSPO director Lee Lou-chuang (李羅權), China has focused on the development of launch vehicles, such as rockets and space shuttles, while Taiwan has focused on advanced scientific satellites.

Lee said that China's development of launch vehicles would help it in launching intercontinental ballistic missiles but its development of top scientific satellites is weak.

"China's development of a scientific payload system is behind Taiwan's," Lee said.

In 1970, China launched its first domestic communications satellite, the Dong Fang-hong, Lee said.

He said China has not successfully launched any state-of-the-art scientific satellite since then.

Lee said there was a wide gap in the resources invested in the two countries' space programs. China has more than 200,000 people working on its space program while the NSPO has less than 200 people.

On average, Lee said, the government allocates NT$2 billion for the development of the space program.

Established in 1991, the NSPO launched the nation's first satellite, ROCSAT-1, from Florida in January 1999.

ROCSAT-2 is scheduled to be launched by the end of this year from a location in California. In 2005, a third satellite, ROCSAT-3 will be launched on a mission to gather meteorological information in a bid to improve weather forecasting and long-term climate prediction.

Lee said Taiwan has developed its own scientific instruments and analyzes data collected by satellites while relying on other countries for the launch tasks.

"We have gained global respect due to our efforts to make scientific data available to the international scientific community," Lee said.

Taking ROCSAT-1 as an example, Lee said that it was jointly developed by scientists from the US and Taiwan.

The satellite is collecting data for three research projects -- ocean color imaging, experiments on ionospheric plasma and electrodynamics, and experiments using Ka-band communication payloads.

Lee said there has already been important information gained in research related to ROCSAT-2, noting that in June, scientists involved in ROCSAT-2 project had a letter published in the science journal Nature.

The letter detailed the first conclusive observation data indicating that a direct optical path was established from the thunderclouds about 15km above the Earth's surface to the ionosphere at the height of about 90km.

In the letter, physicists at National Cheng Kung University stressed that the conventional picture of the global electric circuit needs to be modified to include the contributions of these gigantic jets.