Taiwan’s first locally made GPS receiver for satellite missions functioned normally and passed key environmental tests during nearly two months in space, raising hopes for the nation’s satellite development program.
The National Space Organization (NSPO) on Thursday said in a statement that the receiver, which it developed, was launched into space on a Taiwan-developed IRIS-A CubeSat on Jan. 14 and has since orbited 500km above the Earth’s surface.
The receiver has since operated normally and passed rigorous environmental tests, in the process gaining “flight heritage,” a term used to describe the situation when a technology works in a commercially representative environment, the NPSO said.
Photo: National Space Organization
The more flight heritage a space device accumulates, the more credibility and trust it builds, and the more commercially viable it becomes, but it can be hard for product developers to get their products into orbit.
The NPSO did that by hitching a ride on a cubesat — a miniature satellite used primarily for research. It teamed up with National Cheng Kung University, which developed the IRIS-A CubeSat, to get the GPS device into space.
The GPS receiver’s initial success represents a key step in the agency’s drive to develop and produce satellites with 70 percent of their components made in Taiwan, NSPO Director Wu Jong-shinn (吳宗信) said.
Taiwan has previously relied on foreign GPS receivers for its home-grown satellites, but that is changing, Wu said.
The GPS receiver is to be used in an NSPO-manufactured “wind-hunter” satellite, called the Triton, which is to be launched by the end of this year, as well as in Formosat-8 satellites and synthetic aperture radar satellites, he said.
The NPSO said that the GPS receiver would improve satellites’ ability to navigate and reduce the cost of satellite missions.
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