Taiwan's second satellite may lift off sooner than expected after electrical problems that had delayed plans for a mid-January launch were fixed ahead of schedule, the National Space Program Office (NSPO) said yesterday
Electrical circuit problems were discovered in ROCSAT-2's launcher in early December, prompting US Orbital Sciences Corp (OSC), the operator of the satellite's launch vehicle, to suggest that the launch be postponed from Jan. 17 to Feb. 26.
Chen Shao-shing (
"The scheduled launch might be advanced by one to two weeks," Chen said at a press conference held yesterday in Hsinchu.
Chen said that a shorter-than-predicted repair time was not unexpected because OSC was contracted to pay the space office US$36,000 for each day lost due to technical problems.
NSPO officials said preparations for the launch were almost finished at Vandenberg Air Force Base on California's central coast. A comprehensive examination, however, would be carried out again in order to ensure that no damage was caused by an 6.5 magnitude earthquake that shook California last week.
NSPO scientists yesterday demonstrated its Image Processing System (IPS), an integrated hardware and software system that handles remote sensing image data.
On Aug. 24, the IPS successfully received and outputted the remote sensing image data of Hsinchu from QuickBird, a satellite offering commercial high-resolution images of Earth. Clear images created by the system yesterday were released to the press.
Meanwhile, officials from the National Science Council (NSC) said yesterday that the ROCSAT-2 project would be a success and that the launch date would only be adjusted by scientific and technical factors.
NSC Deputy Minister Shieh Ching-Jyh (謝清志) said that the presidential election in March would have no effect on the launch.
"The ROCSAT-2 project is mission-oriented," Shieh said. "The success of creating the IPS demonstrates an integration of resources from the government, industry and academic circles."
NSPO officials said that the system would be used to process all data captured by ROCSAT-2 in space.
According to Wu An-ming (吳岸明), head of the NSPO's System Engineering Section, ROCSAT-2 will be traced by McMurdo Station, a commercial satellite communication service at the South Pole 18 minutes after the launch. Sixty-three minutes after the launch, the satellite will be picked up by the Swedish Space Corporation's ground station in Kiruna in Northern Sweden.
According to Wu, it would take about 100 minutes for ROCSAT-2 to orbit the Earth. After its fourth circle around the globe, a station in Chungli, Taiwan, will start receiving information from it.
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