Taiwan's first low-orbit scientific experiment satellite, FORMOSAT-1 , was launched on January 27, 1999. This year marks the fifth year of successful operation of FORMOSAT-1 on its 600Km mission orbit. In addition to fulfilling its planned scientific experiment mission, it continues to conduct the measurement of the earth's ionosphere by using an ionospheric plasma and electrodynamics instrument (IPEI) and the Ka-band broadcasting experiments by using the communication sensing instruments.
Last year, the National Space Organization (NSPO) had announced the completion of FORMOSAT-1 scientific mission after the FORMOSAT-1 has operated for four years, the design life of FORMOSAT-1. . The scientific teams participating the FORMOSAT-1 project had shown remarkable scientific achievements by taking advantage of the satellite instrument data. There were more than 200 scientific research papers published during the past four years FORMOSAT-1 operation and the research results have gained worldwide recognitions. Since FORMOSAT-1 is still fully functional, after a thorough consideration, the NSPO decided to keep the satellite operating in its current orbit. The FORMOSAT-1 will continue to provide scientific data for the scientific research team to make better scientific achievements. Recently, the NSPO was invited by the US Air Forces' geophysics lab to provide IPEI data as the importance reference for the C/NOSF satellite mission assignment. In the future, the NSPO will work closely with US Air Force to observe the ionosphere scintillation at the earth's equator. The IPEI on FORMOSAT-1 has conducted complimentary scientific measurements with NASA's TIMED satellite. There already have some research papers published as a result of this collaborative observatory effort. The applied physics lab in Johns Hopkins University has invited Taiwan's IPEI research team to jointly propose a research project of measuring the special ionospheric activities in the F-layer and to participate in the NASA's “Living With a Star” multi-satellite observation project.
Furthermore, the NSPO has signed collaboration memorandum with Sea Space. According to the memorandum, Sea Space will provide MODIS data processing software to NSPO in exchange for NSPO's Ka-Band downlink signal from the FORMOSAT-1. Both parties will be entitled to the research results generated from this collaboration. Lastly, the Canadian Space Agency is in discussion with NSPO on joint projects for application of the Ka-Band data. From these collaborations, it is clearly seen that FORMOSAT-1 has gained the recognitions from space agencies worldwide. |
