The Taitung County Government has fined Taiwan Innovative Space NT$400,000 for illegal construction on farmland in Dajen Township (達仁) near the Alangyi Trail (阿朗壹古道).
Residents had complained to the county about construction in the area, where some of the land is reserved for Aborigines, and that they had not been notified of it, the government said.
The plot of land is to become the company’s space probe rocket launch site, Taiwan Innovative Space chairman Chen yen-sen (陳彥升) said yesterday during a meeting to explain the company’s plans to local residents.
Photo copied by Chen Hsien-yi, Taipei Times
The company had originally planned to conduct its first trial launch at 6am on Friday next week, but that has been postponed, he said.
The 10m-tall, 1.5m-wide rocket weights 3 tonnes, he said, adding that the company aims to reach 200km in height on its first launch.
The ionosphere above Taiwan is active due to its proximity to the equator, Taiwan Innovative Space said, adding that it has accepted a project from the National Space Organization (NSPO) to launch monitoring equipment into the ionosphere for data collection, the company said.
The commercial rocket would primarily launch equipment and satellites and is not affiliated with the military, Chen said.
The launching of the rocket is safe and the firm plans its operations to be eco-friendly, Chen said, adding that no farmland in the Nantian area (南田) would be damaged.
Should the residents in Nantian come to accept the site, the launches would be regular and it could also stimulate local development, Chen said.
During an interview with the Taipei Times last month, Chen said that hybrid rockets are safe, as they would not cause an explosion even if their launch fails.
Chen said that he had worked at NASA for 21 years, before returning to Taiwan around 2005 to work at the NSPO, where he was chief of its systems engineering division and director of its sounding rocket development program, which ended operations after 2014
In 2017, the NSPO commissioned Taiwan Innovative Space to research sounding rockets for launching scientific payloads developed by academics and researchers, a project that is not part of the nation’s third space program from this year through 2028, the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL) said in a statement yesterday.
Taiwan Innovative Space, one of the few companies in the world to use hybrid fuels for rockets, is also working with agencies around the world for more opportunities to perform rocket launches, the NARL said.
Its launch facilities in Taitung are built and fully operated by the company itself, without the NSPO, the NARL added.
Additional reporting by Lin Chia-nan
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