Taiwan flags space ambition with domestically developed weather satellite
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Taiwan Space Agency director-general Wu Jong-shinn speaking at the shipment ceremony of Triton, Taiwan's first locally built weather satellite, in Hsinchu, on July 14.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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HSINCHU, Taiwan – Taiwan’s first domestically developed weather satellite shows the island’s determination to launch its space industry, President Tsai Ing-wen said on Friday, lauding the programme as a step to take the island to the stars.
While Taiwan has since the 1990s had a satellite programme called Formosat, tensions with China have given the government extra impetus, with plans to use satellites in medium- and low-earth orbit for Internet services if China attacks and severs sea cables or other forms of communication.
Sending off the Triton weather satellite to French Guiana where it will be launched in September, Ms Tsai said more than 80 per cent of its components were developed and made locally, and it would carry Taiwan’s own global navigation satellite system.
“The Wind-Hunter Satellite is born-and-bred in Taiwan,” she said at the Taiwan Space Agency in Hsinchu, home to the island’s world-beating semiconductor industry, referring to it by its Chinese-language name. “The Wind-Hunter Satellite proves that with the advantages of Taiwan’s semiconductor and precision manufacturing, it is absolutely capable of entering the global space industry.”
Ms Tsai added that the satellite shows Taiwan’s determination to develop a space industry and participate in the space age.
Triton will be launched into a circular low-earth orbit at an altitude of about 550km to 650km, according to the Taiwan Space Agency.
It is designed to collect sea surface wind data that will be combined with ground radar wind field data to better predict the path of typhoons and heavy rain, both of which sub-tropical Taiwan frequently gets.
The satellite will be launched on an Arianespace Vega C rideshare mission. Arianespace, a rival to Mr Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is majority owned by a joint venture of Airbus and Safran. REUTERS
