Our customer, NSPO in Taiwan, have just shipped six FORMOSAT-7 satellites to the US in preparation for their launch on Falcon Heavy later this year.
Her Excellency Tsai Ing-wen, the President of Taiwan, giving a speech at the event hosted by NSPO to celebrate shipping the spacecraft.
FORMOSAT-7 will be launching as part of the US Air Force STP-2 mission, alongside a number of other spacecraft including another SSTL satellite platform, Orbital Test-Bed-1.
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Loading the containers onto the cargo flight |
Arrival of the cargo at Miami International Airport |
Each of the 6 satellites is carrying an advanced GNSS receiver to low-inclination-angle orbits. The constellation will collect atmospheric data at low- and mid-latitudes to provide more sounding data to improve regional and global weather forecasting in Taiwan.
As well as designing and manufacturing the satellite buses, SSTL will be providing support to NSPO at launch site and our first team of engineers has already headed out to Cape Canaveral. Our engineers will be performing spacecraft functional checks as well as flight software configuration, propulsion leak checks, propellant fuelling, separation system installation, MLI finalisation, and battery charging.
After launch our engineers will continue providing technical support to NSPO’s team who will be performing in orbit commissioning of the spacecraft from their control centre in Taiwan.
Follow us on Twitter @SurreySat for news of the launch.
The FORMOSAT-7/Cosmic 2 constellation is a joint civil mission between the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States (TECRO), represented by NSPO, and the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), represented by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA has supplied the payloads for the satellites, which were integrated and tested in Taiwan.