Update article from yesterday's Taipei Times:
Operations are smooth on satellite’s first day in orbit
Staff writer, with CNA, Los Angeles
Formosat-5, Taiwan’s first domestically built satellite, is operating smoothly after its first day in orbit, a National Space Organization (NSPO) official said in the US on Friday. [...]
The satellite is expected to begin providing data that can be used for national security, geopolitics, scientific and academic purposes in about two weeks, the NSPO said. [...]
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2017/08/27/2003677274
Couple of SpaceX landing photos
Formosat-5 detects two intense solar flares
Formosat-5, Taiwan’s first domestically designed and built satellite, detected the most intense solar flares in 12 years on Wednesday last week and on Monday, National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) associate professor Lin Chien-hung (林建宏) said yesterday.
Harmful radiation from a solar flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere, but the radiation, when intense enough, can disturb a layer of the atmosphere where GPS and communications signals travel, NASA said on Wednesday.
“About three weeks ago, a group of sunspots mushroomed on the sun’s surface,” Lin said. “Their magnetic force is strong, but unstable, causing solar flares and particles to erupt outward.”
Fortunately the two flares did not strike the Earth directly, or they would have created a stronger geomagnetic storm that could last for several days, he said.
The first flare was classified as an X9.3-class flare, which traveled at between 700km and 800km per second, but its effect was minor, Lin said.
The second flare was classified as an X8.2-class flare that could create a minor geomagnetic storm on Earth today, he said.
Thanks to Formosat-5, which was launched on Aug. 25, researchers can collect more data about space weather and make forecasts, he said.
Formosat-5 can observe changes to the ionosphere using its Advanced Ionospheric Probe (AIP), which was designed by National Central University’s professor Chao Chi-kuang (趙吉光) and is superior to Formosat-1’s AIP designed in the US, Lin said.
Lin is a member of NCKU’s Lithosphere, Atmosphere, Space Coupling Laboratory, which began working with the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in April this year.
“The US center hopes to obtain preliminary results from Formosat-5 before the launch of Formosat-7 next year,” Lin said, adding that the US National Weather Service and the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts pay close attention to Taiwan’s progress in space technology.
Formosat-7 is a collaborative program between Taiwan and the US, with its parts and database made by Taiwan’s National Space Organization (NSPO) and its antennae by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as the latter hopes to keep some information confidential, Lin said.
NSPO officials and Lin’s team are to participate in the International Radio Occultation Working Group’s meeting about Formosat-7 in the US next week, he said.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2017/09/13/2003678337
More details
FormoSat-5 images out of focus; adjustment may take months: NARLabs
Taipei, Sept. 19 (CNA) The first photos taken by Taiwan's FormoSat-5 satellite were fuzzy and marred by light spots, which were caused by a focusing problem on the satellite's remote sensing instrument (RSI), the designer National Applied Research Laboratories (NARLabs) said Tuesday
The NT$5.6 billion (US$186 million) FormoSat-5, which was launched in the United States Aug. 25 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, is designed to capture panchromatic images with a resolution of up to two meters per pixel, and multispectral images with a resolution of four meters per pixel.
However, the first images of Earth taken by the RSI were blurry and those of urban areas were marred by light spots, Yu Shiann-jeng (余憲政), deputy chief of NARLabs' National Space Organization (NSPO), confirmed in the wake of local media reports on the issue.
Yu said that after days of observation, the NSPO had concluded that there was a problem with the RSI's focusing function and was trying to make some adjustments.
Regarding the light spots on the images, he said the NSPO was trying to adjust the position and interior temperature of the satellite, among other measures being taken to solve the problem.
The NSPO will also compare the images taken by FormoSat-5 and its predecessor FormoSat-2, using software to improve the former's image resolution, Yu said.
Meanwhile, NARLabs Vice President Wu Kuang-chong (吳光鐘) said the initial testing of FormoSat-5 will take time.
"The current assessment is that the image adjustment will take about two to three months to complete," he said.
FormoSat-5, a 450-kg octagonal shape mini-satellite that is 2.8 meters in height and 1.6 meters in diameter, was designed and built by the NSPO.
The satellite's mission is to advance and demonstrate Taiwan's indigenous space technology in the field of remote sensing satellites, to continue to serve global imagery users previously served by FormoSat-2, and to promote domestic space science research, according to the NSPO.
FormoSat-5 carries an optical remote sensing payload and a science payload to execute remote sensing missions and perform science research, respectively.
(By Huang Li-yun and Elizabeth Hsu)
Enditem/pc
http://m.focustaiwan.tw/news/ast/201709190014.aspx
Worth capturing a key conclusion from the investigations into Formosat-5’s imaging issues:
NSPO Deputy Director General Yu Shiann-jeng (余憲政) said the organization has ruled out the possibility that something happened during the transport or launch of Taiwan's first self-made satellite to cause the images produced by FormoSat-5 to be blurry and contain light spots.
http://focustaiwan.tw/news/ast/201801030010.aspx
Worth capturing a key conclusion from the investigations into Formosat-5’s imaging issues:
NSPO Deputy Director General Yu Shiann-jeng (余憲政) said the organization has ruled out the possibility that something happened during the transport or launch of Taiwan's first self-made satellite to cause the images produced by FormoSat-5 to be blurry and contain light spots.
http://focustaiwan.tw/news/ast/201801030010.aspx
"Achieving commercial value meant image resolutions of 3 meters per pixel for panchromatic images (essentially black-and-white) and 5 meters per pixel for multi-spectral (capturing bands of colors) images.
But that still falls short of the NSPO's goal of 2 meters per pixel for panchromatic images and 4 meters per pixel for multi-spectral images."
So they are almost to their target resolution, 5m vs 4m can't be that big of a deal for customers.