Taiwan flagged its space ambition as President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday marked the departure of the nation’s first indigenously engineered weather satellite from the Taiwan Space Agency at an event at the Hsinchu Science Park.
While Taiwan has since the 1990s had a satellite program, called Formosat, tensions with China have given the government extra impetus, with plans to use satellites in medium and low Earth orbit for Internet services that would be a backup in the event that China severed undersea cables or other communication links.
The Triton satellite — or Wind Hunter (獵風者) — is being shipped to French Guiana, where it is to be launched on an Arianespace Vega rocket in September.
Photo: CNA
“The Wind Hunter satellite was born and bred in Taiwan,” Tsai said, adding that almost everything about the spacecraft, from conceptual design to manufacturing, was done in Taiwan.
“The Wind Hunter proves that with the advantages of Taiwan’s semiconductor and precision manufacturing, the nation is absolutely capable of entering the global space industry,” she said.
The satellite shows Taiwan’s determination to develop a space industry and participate in the space age, she said.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
Triton is to be put into a circular low Earth orbit at an altitude of about 550km to 650km, the Taiwan Space Agency said.
It is to collect sea-surface wind data that would be combined with ground radar wind field data to better predict heavy rain and the paths of typhoons.
Taiwan Space Agency Director-General Wu Jong-shinn (吳宗信) said that Triton was initially planned to be one of the satellites making up the Formosat-7 constellation before being retasked following structural changes to the nation’s space program.
The changes meant that Triton would be made almost entirely in Taiwan in a move aimed at bolstering the domestic aerospace industry, Wu said, adding that research and development for Triton began in 2014.
Eighty-three percent of its key components were manufactured domestically, showing how much the nation’s spacecraft research and development capabilities have improved, he said.
Triton’s launch would be a boon to the global meteorological community, as many satellites have been retired in the past few years, he said.
The commercialization of space exploration began a mere four years ago and the nation has kept pace with progress in the sector, National Science and Technology Council Minister Wu Tsung-tsong (吳政忠) said.
In May, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sent a delegation to Taiwan and expressed interest in collaborative efforts involving Triton, he said, adding that meteorological satellites are highly versatile.
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