RazakSAT ready for launch

Friday, 27 March 2009 00:13

Source: New Straits Times

KOTA KINABALU: Malaysia will send into space the world's first remote sensing satellite to orbit the equator on April 21, providing high resolution images of Malaysia that can be used to provide information on land management, forestry and security.

The 190kg satellite, RazakSAT, which will orbit the equator every 100 minutes, will also be used to gather photographic data on resource development, conservation and fish migration.

Named after Malaysia's second prime minister Tun Abdul Razak, the satellite was developed by the Aeronautical Engineering Sdn Bhd (ATSB), a company under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. It will be launched using a US rocket named Falcon-1.

RazakSAT will orbit at an altitude of 685km after it takes off from its launch pad at Kwajalein Island in the Marshall Islands.

ATSB chief executive officer Datuk Dr Ahmad Sabirin Arshad said the satellite could be used to provide important information on Malaysia.

"The orbit for satellites is usually north to south, and this is known as the polar orbit.

"Malaysia is at the equator, so we should be able to see the benefits of a satellite (that orbits the equator). It will provide important details for analysis," he said yesterday.

The satellite which left the Royal Malaysian Air Force base in Subang at 10.15am on a C-130H military aircraft, touched down at the international airport here at 1.50pm for re-fuelling, before continuing a 7-hour journey to Guam.

RMAF Lt-Col Raja Mohar Raja Rahman is the captain of the flight, which will then make its final 5-hour journey to Kwajalein Island.

Earlier, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovations Datuk Dr Maximus Ongkili said RazakSAT was a testimony of the talent and capability of local scientists in space technology.

He was speaking at the Subang Air Base before sending off the satellite on board a RMAF aircraft.

RazakSat is equipped with a medium-sized aperture camera (MAC) to capture high resolution images of the Earth along the near equatorial orbit and can be useful especially to the ministry's Malaysian Remote Sensing Agency, which conducts research in satellite applications in agriculture, natural disasters, fish migration, security as well as land and forest management.

Dr Ongkili said the MAC onboard RazakSAT had a better focusing capability compared to the previous satellite, the experimental TiungSAT.

Two small satellites would also be launched together with RazakSAT from Kwajalein for educational purposes.

One of them CubeSAT was developed by ATSB, while the other, InnoSAT, was developed by Universiti Sains Malaysia, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and Universiti Malaysia Perlis, both of which were funded by the ministry.

The prime minister and cabinet members are expected to follow the launch from the National Space Centre in Kg Sg Lang, Banting.

Comments

Only registered users can write comments!

< Prev		Next >

Main Menu

Online

None

MalaysiaGIS.com

3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

Main Menu

Online

Login