June 10, 2005
After completing its first successful year serving Taiwan from orbit, FORMOSAT-2 is preparing to start earning money. The National Space Organization estimates that Taiwan's second satellite could generate revenues of
NTD 80 million in the second half of the year and up to
NTD 200 million in 2006. Over the next five years, the satellite is expected to earn a total of
NTD 2 billion.
The main mission of FORMOSAT-2 is remote sensing of the Earth and the observation of upper atmospheric lightning. Its revenues will comes from the sale of remote sensing images.
For international customers FORMOSAT-2 will charge an average of
NTD 230 per square kilometer. This rate is ten to twenty percent more expensive than that charged for images from France's Spot 5 satellite, but is forty to sixty percent cheaper than the rate for images from the United States' Quickbird satellite.
The NSP says that in its first year of operation FORMOSAT-2 has primarily served by providing high-resolution remote sensing images for land-use planning and disaster relief operations. The July Second Flood, Typhoon Aere and Typhoon Nock-Ten in Taiwan and the Southeast Asia Tsunami/Earthquake Disaster are among the disasters for which FORMOSAT-2 provided imaging services.
The National Space Organization is currently searching for an appropriate launcher for its FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC system. This is a constellation of six micro-satellites whose primary mission is the gathering of atmospheric remote sensing data for weather monitoring and for conducting research on the climate, ionosphere and gravity.
(Central News Agency)
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