Taiwan is developing a new satellite constellation that would be capable of monitoring Chinese missile movements and submarines through clouds and at night, Taiwan Space Agency Director-General Wu Jong-shinn (吳宗信) said in an interview yesterday.
The agency began work on the Formosat-9 constellation earlier this year, and the program’s centerpiece is a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system, he told the Liberty Times (the sister paper of the Taipei Times).
Assuming good orbital placement, SAR-bearing satellites can detect objects on Earth in adverse weather conditions or darkness that would have made optical imaging systems ineffective, Wu said.
Photo: Chang Chia-juei, Taipei Times
The ability of SAR satellites to observe at night would enable Taiwan to conduct up to six satellite passages per day to surveil sensitive Chinese sites, including submarine bases in Haian and nuclear missile silos in Xinjiang, he said.
The higher rate of passages would mean pattern-of-life analyses could be conducted on Chinese forces after a month of satellite operations, which would be a boon to national security, he said.
Satellite imagery technology has significant potential for civilian use, as Formosat-5 showed in 2021, when the constellation detected a 15-hectare landslide in Kaohsiung and provided key information that helped the relief effort, Wu said.
The agency’s multispectral imaging-capable satellites were utilized by the nation’s agricultural mission to fight a banana blight in Paraguay, he said.
Starting this year, the Taiwan Space Agency is to launch eight Formosat-9 optical satellites, including six 1m-resolution units and two hyper-resolution (or 50cm) units, he said.
In February, the agency inaugurated the B5G project to launch low Earth orbit communication satellites as part of an effort to reduce the nation’s reliance on undersea Internet cables, which are susceptible to accidental damage and sabotage, he said.
Possessing a satellite-based telecoms network is a vital component of national defense, as it makes a nation’s digital infrastructure harder to disrupt, Wu said.
In the Russia-Ukraine war, Elon Musk’s Starlink has played an important role in sustaining Ukraine’s ability to resist the invaders, he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had made a point of streaming from Kyiv at various points of the conflict to assure people that the government still stands, Wu said.
According to the agency’s estimates, ensuring uninterrupted telecommunications in Taiwan would require a constellation of 120 low Earth orbit satellites each weighing 200kg to 300kg, which is similar to the technical specifications of Starlink, he said.
Although the nation lacks the wherewithal in rocketry to launch that many, it can be overcome by means other than a purely indigenous effort, while Taiwan’s technology industry has the potential to produce the satellites itself, Wu said.
The age of sixth-generation non-terrestrial networks is likely to be in about five to six years, and Taiwan should prepare to claim a place in the supply chain of that technology, he said.
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