Fine weather in California might help the launch today of Taiwan's second satellite, ROCSAT-2, officials of the National Science Council (NSC) said yesterday.
The liftoff was scheduled for the morning of May 20 -- California time -- at which point it was to be 1:47am today in Taiwan.
Chern Jeng-shing (
Council Deputy Minister Shieh Ching-jyh (
NSPO Director Lee Luo-chuan (李羅權) told the Taipei Times yesterday that the weather in California would be pleasant, according to weather reports.
"Wind speed might be between only 10 knots and 15 knots. This is far inside the security limit, which is about 40 knots," Lee said.
For the final countdown, scientists at NSPO headquarters in Hsinchu and other stations in Taiwan would be in close contact with their colleagues at the launch site in California. As of press time, all preparations were going according to plan.
According to the NSPO, ROCSAT-2's progress will be tracked beginning 18 minutes after the launch from McMurdo Station, a commercial satellite communication service at the South Pole. The satellite will be picked up 63 minutes after the launch by the Swedish Space Corporation's ground station in Kiruna, northern Sweden.
This morning, after the satellite's fourth orbit around the globe, it will start sending information to a station in Chungli. All information will be transferred back to NSPO headquarters in Hsinchu. President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is scheduled to monitor the information transfer through real-time networks from the Presidential Office in the company of new NSC Minister Wu Mao-kung (吳茂昆) and Lee.
Lee said the launch date had nothing to do with the presidential inauguration, because the date was determined according to scientific factors.
The satellite was designed and built by the NSPO in collaboration with a contractor, Astrium Company of France. Originally, the collaborative project was carried out with Germany. Due to pressure from China, Germany in 1999 refused to issue a high-tech export bid for the project. The pan-European Astrium, established in 2000 and the result of a merger of Germany-based DASA, France-based Matra-Marconi Space and other European companies, then won the bid, amounting to NT$4.7 billion.
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