FORMOSAT-2 was successfully launched on Friday, May 21, 2004 into an orbital of 728 altitude and 99.1 degree inclination . In a period of 11 days, from May 23 to June 2, FORMOSAT-2 has performed 32 thrust bursts and four orbital inclination changes to enter its mission orbit at an altitude of 891 kilometers with inclination angle of 99.14 deg. The operation team had immediately conducted on-orbit checkout on the Remote Sensing Instrument (RSI), Image Processing Unit (IPU), Solid State Recorder (SSR) and X-band Antenna (TMI) in the same day. On June 3, the operation team had downloaded the star test pattern, dark current, and opened the shutter for image capture.

The FORMOSAT-2 captured its first image in orbit 204 on June 4, at 9:39. The image covered the area of Taiwan western corridor, from Hsinchu all the way to Kaohsiung. On June 5, at 9:39, the image of mid-western part of Taiwan was captured in orbit 218. The images of Taipei, Penghu, and Kengdin were taken on June 6 while the images of eastern Taiwan and Penghu were taken on June 7 and June 8, respectively. To successfully capture images from satellite not only requires precise satellite operations but also needs ground visibility. Since most part of Taiwan had clear sky in these few days, the image capturing procedures were carried out smoothly. Under the command of the National Space Organization (NSPO) mission control center, these satellite images were received at the X-band antenna receiving station located at the top of the NSPO office building. These images, after being processed by Image Processing System (IPS), could display most parts of Taiwan (including northern, central, southern, and eastern Taiwan and the offshore island) in color images with resolution of 8 meters and in black/white images with resolution of 2 meters. After the initial evaluation, NSPO found that the image resolution and clarity of the RSI on ROCSAT-2 had met the expectation.

Since the satellite has already entered its repetitive mission orbit and scheduled to cross Taiwan's western seashore at 9:40 am every day, the satellite is extremely useful to observe phenomena related to daily changes such as disaster investigation, environment monitoring, and farm produce survey. In the following month, NSPO will make further evaluation on the scheduling accuracy, image-capturing areas planning, and conduct series of RSI function testing and image processing system parameters calibrations.

The FORMOSAT-2 is also carried an Imager of Sprites and Upper Atmospheric Lightning (ISUAL). This instrument allows the satellite to continuously capture the 2-dimensional images of the natural phenomena that take place at night between 30 to 100 kilometers above the ground such as Red Sprites, blue jets, airglow, aurora borealis, etc.. The NSPO operation team has already initiated the ISUAL instrument and scheduled to conduct scientific observation next week. At that point, FORMOSAT-2 will enter its normal operation mode.