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.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS