Taiwan flags space ambition with domestically developed weather satellite

Taiwan's first domestically developed weather satellite shows its determination to develop its space industry, President Tsai Ing-wen said on Friday, lauding the programme as a step to take the island to the stars.

While Taiwan has since the 1990s had a satellite programme, called FORMOSAT, tension with China has given the government extra impetus, with plans to use satellites in medium- and low-earth orbit for internet services if China attacks and severs sea cables or other forms of communication.

Sending off the Triton weather satellite to French Guiana where it will be launched in September, Tsai said more than 80% of its components were developed and produced in Taiwan and it would carry Taiwan's own global navigation satellite system.

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"The Wind-Hunter Satellite is born-and-bred made in Taiwan," she said at Taiwan Space Agency in the northern city of Hsinchu, home to Taiwan's world-beating semiconductor industry, referring to it by its Chinese-language name.

"The Wind-Hunter Satellite proves that with the advantages of Taiwan's semiconductor and precision manufacturing, it is absolutely capable of entering the global space industry," Tsai said, adding that the satellite showed Taiwan's determination to develop a space industry and participate in the space age.

Triton will be launched into a circular low-earth orbit at an altitude of about 550-650 km (340-400 miles), according to the Taiwan Space Agency.

It is designed to collect sea surface wind data that will be combined with ground radar wind field data to better predict the path of typhoons and heavy rain, both of which subtropical Taiwan frequently gets.

The satellite will be launched on an Arianespace Vega C rideshare mission. Arianespace, a rival to Elon Musk's SpaceX, is majority-owned by a joint venture of Airbus and Safran.