Taiwan-Made 'Star Tracker' To Be Part of Milestone Regional Space Mission

TaiwanPlus News

The Taiwan Space Agency's domestically developed star tracker is set to be part of a multi-agency rideshare flight by British firm In-Space Missions, which will include devices by Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore. The mission, dubbed Faraday Dragon, is the first of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region and is scheduled to launch in 2026.

Transcript

00:00Humanity has always looked to the stars and sought new ways to learn more about them.

00:06That's precisely the goal of this team at Taiwan's National Space Agency, TASA,

00:11study the stars as part of a milestone rideshare flight

00:15under a subsidiary of British defense firm BAE Systems,

00:19a mission codenamed Faraday Dragon.

00:24Frank Lowe says it's a unique opportunity for Taiwan.

00:28He supervises TASA's Global Cooperation Office,

00:32and he says that the mission scheduled to launch next year

00:35is much more than just a partnership between Taiwan and the U.K.

00:40It hosts roughly about 16 payloads from various institutes and different countries.

00:47It actually provides a good platform for TASA, you know,

00:51through this platform to cooperate and collaborate

00:55and to have the dialogue with other stakeholders in the Faraday Dragon program.

01:00The satellite, designed by InSpace Missions,

01:03is set to carry a host of devices made by Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, and Singapore.

01:10It comes as BAE Systems looks to carve out a bigger stake

01:14in a booming commercial space sector,

01:16looking to take on frontrunners like SpaceX.

01:24Taiwan is still working on building up its own rocket launch capabilities.

01:29So for now, ride-sharing is the main way to send its devices into space

01:34and rack up their flight heritage,

01:37a sort of mileage count to prove that its devices work up there and work reliably.

01:43For this mission, TASA has selected its star tracker.

01:47Stars are a key navigational tool for spacecraft,

01:51and the tracker's job is to locate and identify stars

01:54so the satellite knows where it is and where it needs to go.

01:58Not an easy feat in the pitch blackness of space.

02:02To test to see whether the tracker works,

02:05the engineers can run what's called a stimulation.

02:08Now, this dark screen is not off.

02:10It's a model of what the tracker actually sees in space.

02:15Now, to the naked eye, you can barely see the specks of white that are the stars.

02:20But if you look at this screen,

02:22the tracker is not only spotting the stars that are there,

02:25but identifying them down to the ID number.

02:29Perfecting homegrown devices like the star tracker

02:32is key to Taiwan's wider goal of putting more domestically made components

02:37and satellites into space.

02:39Lo says the Faraday Dragon mission is a possible turning point for TASA

02:44and how it plans future flights of its flagship Formosat program,

02:49a series of satellite launches that started in the late 90s,

02:53which have achieved various goals like remote sensing and weather observation.

02:58We already carry out and working on our own ride-sharing project.

03:04By 2031, actually, we will launch the SoCo Pharmacet 8 and Pharmacet 9.

03:11We already reserve certain space and masks that could accommodate other parties' payload.

03:19Through learning from countries with more advanced space programs,

03:23Taiwan is vying to provide its own opportunities for other emerging players

03:29to hitch a ride on a Taiwanese satellite to the depths of space

03:33and jointly learn more about what lies beyond our Earth.

03:37Scott Huang, Howard Zhang and Joyce Zinn for Taiwan Plus.

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