A domestically engineered weather satellite is to depart Taiwan today for French Guiana, where it is to be launched in September, the Taiwan Space Agency said on Monday.
The agency said that the Triton Wind-Hunter Satellite is to be put into orbit on an Arianespace Vega C rideshare mission.
To get the satellite ready for launch, a pre-shipment review was initiated in the middle of last month, with 15 inspectors completing final checks, the agency said.
Photo: An Rong Xu, Bloomberg
Triton project manager Lin Chen-tsung (林辰宗) said that the two-day review included assembly testing, instrument verification and environment adaptability, while tests were also run to ensure that ground computers controlling the satellite would operate smoothly.
The review showed that all of the specifications were up to standard, Lin said.
The space agency said that the satellite was clear to be transported following inspections and follow-up questions from the review board.
Taiwan Space Agency Director-General Wu Jong-shinn (吳宗信) said that the Triton project was initiated in 2014 and has reached the launch phrase after eight years of hard work.
Triton is Taiwan’s first domestically engineered weather satellite and was built with many domestic components, including Taiwan’s own global navigation satellite system-reflectometry (GNSS-R), Wu said.
The GNSS-R is a data-processing module developed by the agency and the Central Weather Bureau, along with other technology and meteorology experts to collect sea surface wind data that would be combined with ground radar wind field data to more accurately predict heavy rainfall and the paths of typhoons.
Triton is to be launched into a low Earth orbit at an altitude of 550km to 650km, the agency said.
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