GOVERNMENT-FUNDED SPACE DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES IN SMALLER ASIAN ECONOMIES
CONTENTS
INDONESIA...... 2
KOREA ...... 2
MALAYSIA...... 4
SINGAPORE ...... 5
TAIWAN...... 6
THAILAND...... 8
VIETNAM...... 9
Introduction This brief summary reports space activities in seven Asian countries: Indonesia, (South) Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Except for Korea, which in this region is now ranked third in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) after Japan and China, these countries are among the smaller economies in Asia Pacific region. Except for Korea, none has a GDP equal to half of that of Australia. All except Singapore are classified as developing countries.
These notes were compiled from information collected through visits to capitals and research centres over the period 1994-2003. The information came from senior academics and government officials, senior executives of research centres and companies, and independent observers.
Where possible, the notes were updated from Internet sources.
Unless stated otherwise, all dollar amounts in this summary refer to Australian dollars.
Page 1 of 9 INDONESIA Indonesia is one of the poorer developing countries of the region, with a population of 237 million and a 2007 GDP of USD432.9m.
Indonesia was the first small economy in the Asia Pacific region to have its own domestic communications satellite system. Its first Palapa satellite was launched in 1976, almost a decade ahead of Australia’s Aussat. The government-owned aircraft manufacturer IPTN built structural parts and wiring harnesses for subsequent Palapa satellites supplied by Hughes of the US in the 1990s. However the Indonesian Government was forced to reduce its support for IPTN as a condition of IMF assistance after the Asian economic crisis of 1997, and the space work at IPTN ended.
Indonesia has a National Aeronautics and Space Institute (LAPAN), an R&D organisation founded in 1963 with 1,300 staff spread amongst thirteen locations in Indonesia. It operates remote sensing ground stations and has a sounding rocket program. LAPAN has a budget of less than $5m per year. It reports to the President but is under the coordination of the Minister for Research and Technology.
LAPAN launched a 50 kg multi-mission remote sensing satellite in January 2007. LAPAN-TUBSAT, as it was called, carried two colour cameras with 6m and 120m resolution. LAPAN engineers worked on the satellite with the Technical University of Berlin, hence the name TUBSAT.
KOREA South Korea (referred to hereafter as simply Korea) is a developing country with a population of 48 million. Its fast-growing GDP recently eclipsed that of Australia and is now 5% larger. It has security concerns with its neighbour on the Korean peninsula, North Korea.
Korea is the leader amongst smaller economies in the Asia Pacific region with respect to government investment designed to achieve the capability to supply space systems.
Korea has a government science infrastructure which ranks in size with Australia’s. The budget of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI, founded in 1991), one of the key institutes in the space effort, was approaching $200m per year in 2003 (KRW156.4b). Other important research organisations include the Korea Advanced Institute for Science and Technology (KAIST) and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).
Like Australia, Korea acquired a domestic satellite system as a result of a political decision rather than a business decision. Australia launched Aussat in 1985, and Korea launched Koreasat in 1995, ten years later.
KAIST embarked on a microsatellite program in 1990 in parallel with the acquisition of the Koreasat system, primarily for educational purposes. With industry support KAIST established its Satellite Technology Research Centre (SaTReC). SaTReC now has a remote sensing group and takes imagery from SPOT, JERS, ERS and EROS satellites. It built two early microsatellites: • Kitsat-1, around 50 kg, built by Korean engineers at Surrey Satellite Technologies Ltd (SSTL) in the UK and launched in 1992, and • Kitsat-2, also around 50 kg, built in Korea using a SSTL platform design and carrying a Korean payload when launched in 1993.
As a consequence of the Kitsat experience the Korean content in the Koreasat-1 and 2 satellites was around 30%, much higher than the Australian content achieved with Aussat/Optus satellites. More than 50 Korean engineers were trained at the spacecraft suppliers, GE Astro (now Lockheed Martin) in the US and Matra Marconi Space (in Europe, now Astrium), as part of the supply contracts.
In April 1996 the Korean Government announced a long-term space plan, to build and launch 19 satellites over the twenty-year period from 1996 to 2015, with a notional 20-year budget of $US4b. Its elements were
Page 2 of 9 • a domestic launching capability to put 100 kg into an orbit 500 km high by 2005, • seven multipurpose satellites, • seven or eight scientific microsatellites, and • five communications satellites, mostly GEO.
Launch vehicles The Korea Space Launch Vehicle (KSLV) program consists of two consecutive low-earth orbit (LEO) launch vehicle developments, named KSLV-I and KSLV-II. KSLV-I will be capable of carrying a payload of 100 kg into low Earth orbit and KSLV-II a payload of 1,500 kg to geostationary orbit.
In January 2001 the Ministry of Science & Technology selected Oenarodo Island, off Kohung in Cholla province, as the site on which to develop a launch site for an indigenous launcher, at a cost of around $210m. A ground-breaking ceremony was held in July 2003. Russia (with which the Ministry of Science and Technology has a technology coordination program) is helping to build the Korea Space Centre, now called NARO.
Korea’s first liquid-fuelled rocket, the KSR-3 (precursor to the KSLV-I), was successfully launched on a suborbital trajectory for the first time in November 2002 from Anhueng. The KSLV-I has since been developed with Russian support at a cost exceeding KRW500b (over $500m), and the first flight is expected late in 2008 or soon thereafter.
The current target is for KSLV-II to be developed by 2020.
Multipurpose satellites The first of the multipurpose satellites, weighing 470 kg and called KOMPSAT-1 (for Korean Multi- Purpose Satellite, now called Arirang-1), was originally built by TRW in California under a USD130m contract. It carried a 10m resolution imaging system. At least 50 Korean engineers (some from the government labs, some from industry) received on-the-job training from TRW, and a larger number back in Korea reviewed all the documentation generated by the project so they too learned and established their own capability. When the TRW flight model of KOMPSAT-1 was delivered to KARI, Korean engineers built a duplicate flight model and transferred TRW’s camera to the new bus. This “Koreanised” satellite was launched in 1999.
The second multi-purpose satellite in the national program, the 800 kg KOMPSAT-2 (now named Arirang-2), received government approval in 1999 and was launched in Russia in July 2006. It carried a camera with 1m resolution as the primary payload and a multispectral camera capable of 4m resolution. The bus was mainly Korean-built, with foreign input through consultants and some components. Arirang-2 was assembled, integrated and tested by KAI. The program cost was USD170m.
Work on KOMPSAT-3 (Arirang-3) started in 2004 and the satellite will be launched in late 2009. It will monitor the Korean peninsula using a carry a camera capable of sub-meter class resolution for its planned lifetime of four years. KOMPSAT-3 is to meet the nation’s needs for high-resolution imagery required for Geographical Information Systems and other environmental, agricultural and oceanographic monitoring applications. The government’s contribution to the satellite is KRW287 billion (around AUD300m).
KOMPSAT-5, work on which started in the middle of 2005, is to be launched in 2010. Its payload will be an X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) which it will operate at Dawn-Dusk orbit. The stated goal of this project is the development of the first Korean SAR satellite using manpower and facilities from the KOMPSAT-3 program. It aims to support the national demand for SAR imagery (which, one imagines, will include military demand) and establish technology infrastructure to make inroads into the global space industry.
Microsatellites Following the announcement of the long-term space plan in 1996, KAIST built two further microsatellites as part of the national program. They were • Kitsat-3, weighing 110 kg when launched in 1999, with both bus and payload wholly designed and built in Korea, and
Page 3 of 9 • Kitsat-4 (now referred to as KAISTSAT-4 and STSat-1, for Science and Technology Satellite-1), which also weighed 120kg, which was launched in September 2003. KAISTSAT-4 carried a far- ultraviolet imaging spectrograph and space physics package, and is jointly operated with the University of California, Berkeley.
STSat-2 (Science and Technology Satellite-2), a 100 kg class microsatellite, is now under construction. The payloads are dual-channel radiometers for earth and atmosphere to measure the brightness temperature of earth, and a laser retro-reflector array to measure the precise distance between a ground station and the satellite. STSat-2 will be launched on KSLV-I from the NARO domestic space centre shortly after that launcher becomes available. The objective of the STSat-2 program is technology development for small spacecraft that will be applied to advanced studies of core satellite technology.
Communications satellites This element of the national plan has made least progress. In particular Korea has not developed a bus for a geostationary satellite. Around the time the long-term plan was announced, Hyundai Electronics Industries (HEI), committed $345m to build its own facility in which to assemble, integrate and test satellites sized up to the largest. It was supporting a national goal that future replacements for the Koreasat system be designed and built in Korea. However the economic crisis that engulfed Korea in the latter part of 1997 caused HEI to withdraw from the space business. It is understood that there are still ambitions at KARI to gain this capability.
The first geostationary satellite in the national program is the Communications, Ocean and Meteorology Satellite (COMS, weighing 2.5 tonnes), to be a geostationary satellite performing three categories of missions: • weather monitoring of the entire globe, especially of East Asia and the Korean peninsula, with high spatial, temporal and spectral resolution; • ocean colour monitoring for the management of marine resources and ecosystems around the Korean peninsula, and • in-orbit verification of a Ka-band communication payload technology developed by domestic institutes.
Work on building competence in the manufacture of GEO communications satellites is under way. The Ministry of Information and Communication (MoIC) is funding a USD35m program over five years at ETRI, which is aimed at developing an internationally competitive capability to supply Ku and Ka-band transponders to satellite manufacturers around the world. It was planned that at its conclusion, provided the transponders ETRI has developed pass the necessary tests, several transponders in both Ku and Ka-bands might be flown on Koreasat-5 as a development payload. Koreasat-5, which carries a mixed military and commercial payload, was built in France and launched in August 2006. It is not known whether any of its payload was built in Korea.
Korea also has an astronaut program. A Korean astronaut travelled to the International Space Station in 2008 on the Russian Soyuz vehicle.
MALAYSIA Malaysia is another developing country with security concerns, mainly with Muslim extremists on its northern border with Thailand and with bandits from southern Philippines. It also has a sometimes- prickly relationship with Singapore. Malaysia has a population of 25 million and a GDP 21% the size of Australia’s.
Malaysia’s national space program can be traced directly to acquisition of its communications satellite system, Measat. The contract for Measat-1 was signed in May 1994 and it was launched in January 1996. The launch service provider for Measat-1 and 2, Arianespace, offered Malaysia two microsatellite launches free of charge. In January 1995 the Prime Minister announced the formation of a government/academia/business consortium to build one or two microsatellites, and thereby master satellite technology, but the project management fell out with commercial interests and the consortium broke up.
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The program was subsequently pursued by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (MSTE), essentially without industry or university support. A government-owned company, Astronautic Technology (M) Sdn Bhd (ATSB), was formed to execute the program under the general oversight of the Space Science Studies Division (BAKSA) of MSTE.
The first national project built through ATSB was a 50 kg multi-mission satellite named TiungSAT-1, which was built in the UK by Surrey Satellite Technologies Ltd (SSTL) with involvement by Malaysian engineers. The satellite was launched in September 2000. The Malaysian Government allocated more than $17m for the TiungSAT project.
The second national project is called RazakSAT and was commenced in 2001. The objectives are to demonstrate indigenous spacecraft design and manufacturing competence, to gain experience in high- resolution imagery from near equatorial LEO orbit (NeqO) and its processing for application in developing countries, and to develop technology for future missions. ATSB is the prime contractor. RazakSAT weighs less than 200kg and carries a camera with 2.5m resolution built by SaTReC Initiative Co of Korea (a spinoff company from SaTReC). Its near-equatorial orbit will have 9o inclination, to serve Malaysian remote sensing needs such as monitoring forest fires and the environment. Launch was planned for 2005 as a secondary payload using the Small Payload ORbit Transfer (SPORT) vehicle under development by AeroAstro of the US with Malaysian involvement. The satellite, which cost MYR60 million (about $21 million), was delivered in 2006 and is awaiting launch from Omelek Island, one of the Marshall Islands, using the American SpaceX Falcon 1 launch vehicle.
In March 2000 the Malaysian Cabinet decided to establish a National Space Agency (NSA), together with a National Space Council to which reports an advisory committee, which also oversees the space agency. The National Space Council is chaired by the Prime Minister, reflecting both his support and the importance Malaysia places on this initiative. The objectives of the Agency’s national program are to support the development of the new economy, to generate knowledge and to strengthen the national security infrastructure.
The NSA was formally established in July 2002. It has a government-approved budget from 2002 to 2010 of approximately USD310m. Part of this investment is for national infrastructure but most is for programs.
Some work has been done on the next Malaysian satellite, NEqO-2. Initial planning started in February 2003 and originally this was to carry a synthetic aperture radar payload and be launched in 2006-7. This has been subsequently re-assessed and its current status is unknown. NEqO-3 may carry an hyperspectral payload. The fourth satellite in this series (for GEO, not LEO) will possibly carry a developmental communications payload.
As a result of a deal for Malaysia to buy 18 Sukhoi 30-MKM fighters, Russia offered to launch a Malaysian astronaut to the International Space Station. This mission took place in October 2007.
SINGAPORE Singapore is geographically the smallest country in this summary, and the only one officially classified as “developed”. It has a population of 4.6 million and a GDP slightly smaller than Malaysia’s, amounting to 18% of that of Australia. It has very little sea and airspace around it, and a sometimes- prickly relationship with both Malaysia and with Indonesia.
The development of satellite technology in Singapore has been led by the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and parallels the acquisition of Singapore’s first communications satellite, ST-1, launched in August 1998. NTU established a satellite engineering program in 1995 and in 1999 it established its Satellite Engineering Centre. The primary objectives of the NTU program are teaching and research, but the initiative also aims to equip Singapore to build satellite components and develop sufficient infrastructure to bid to locate in Singapore gateway stations for global low Earth orbit (LEO) and mid Earth orbit (MEO) mobile communications constellations. It does not aim to develop capability to build complete satellites.
Page 5 of 9 NTU’s program is named “Merlion” (the symbol of Singapore), and has four phases. The first, which is complete, developed LEO satellite ground control infrastructure. NTU has an array of ground facilities, and there are others at the National University of Singapore (NUS), which is the major focus of Singapore’s remote sensing activity.
The second phase was funded with approximately $4.25m from the National Science and Technology Board (NSTB). In late 1995 NTU signed an agreement with Surrey Satellite Technologies of the UK (SSTL) to co-develop an experimental 350 kg mini-satellite platform, UoSAT-12. NTU participated in cooperative satellite design work at SSTL, and built a three-part L to S-band communications package. This satellite was launched in April 1999.
NTU is now working on the next phase of its program, which aims to fly its own 105 kg microsatellite named X-Sat. A technology demonstration mission, X-Sat will develop capability within Singapore to design, build, test, launch and operate a microsatellite bus with multi-mission support capability. The project will deliver a high resolution imaging system for monitoring events such as forest fires in Indonesia and attacks on shipping in the sea lanes near Singapore.
X-Sat will carry as its primary payload IRIS, an earth imaging instrument with a resolution of 10m. IRIS is being built by SaTReCi of Korea. There are two secondary payloads, ADAM and PPU. ADAM (Advanced Data Acquisition and Messaging) is derived from Australia’s FedSat. PPU (Parallel Processing Unit) is NTU’s design and development for experimental on-board processing.
NTU embarked on the X-Sat project intending to fund the project itself, at a cost of SGD9.6m (NTU is funded by the Ministry of Education). X-Sat is now jointly funded by the Defence Science Organisation (DSO) through its National Laboratories. In December 2001 NTU and DSO executed a memorandum of understanding to form a joint NTU - DSO Centre for Research in Satellite Technologies (CREST). The MoU covers X-Sat, the joint development of micro-satellites, and research and development in satellite engineering. NTU’s contribution to the funding of X-Sat is SGD6m and DSO National Laboratories are contributing SGD3m. X-Sat is targeted for launch in late 2008.
The long term NTU plan, to be achieved within ten years, is to have a semi-commercial constellation of five to six LEO satellites in equatorial orbit, for both communications and remote sensing. NTU would probably collaborate with the National University of Singapore and the Defence Science Technology Agency (DSTA) in this program.
TAIWAN Taiwan occupies a relatively small island east of China, which claims Taiwan as a renegade province. It has a population of 23 million and a GDP 42% the size of Australia’s. Relations with China provide its greatest security issue, focussing on the Taiwan Straits.
Taiwan acquired its first communications satellite, ST-1, in August 1998 in cooperation with Singapore. (Not being a member of the ITU, Taiwan cannot secure an orbital location of its own.) Its National Space Program was approved well ahead of that date, in October 1991, and Taiwan now has the second largest program amongst the smaller economies in the region. The Taiwanese program had an initial commitment of $775m over the 15 years to 2006. A strategic plan for the second 15 years of the program was approved in 2002; implementation commenced in 2004. The expected overall budget for this phase is around USD740m. The actual budget will depend on the program and will be subject to approval on a yearly basis.
Taiwan’s National Space Program is managed by the National Space Program Office (NSPO, now called the National Space Organization), which is an organ of the National Science Council and is located in Hsin-Chu. The NSPO is a government agency, but was being corporatized at last report. Legislation was being developed to empower the NSPO to make commercial investments, giving it a wider role in developing commercial space capability in Taiwan. The current status of this change is unknown.
Taiwan’s strategic plan has the primary objective of building self-reliance in satellite construction, specifically the capability to design and construct LEO satellites. NSPO seeks Taiwanese prime
Page 6 of 9 contractors for its major projects wherever possible, with a minimum of outsourced components. It continues to seek transfer of technology into Taiwan. NSPO aspires to gain the capability to build a small bus (500 kg or smaller), with its academic and research community developing instruments that might fly on that bus.
The first national project was a 400 kg minisatellite (ROCSat-1, now called FORMOSAT-1) built with TRW of the US, carrying communications, ocean colour scanning and ionospheric physics payloads. This project commenced in 1994 and the satellite was launched in January 1999. It provided the impetus for the construction of AI&T, TT&C, mission control and other infrastructure. Taiwanese engineers received training in the US as part of the contract with TRW. Taiwanese companies built computing, solar power and communications systems that flew on the satellite.
The second project in the initial 15-year program was ROCSat-2 (now FORMOSAT-2), a 700 kg remote sensing satellite. The objectives of the FORMOSAT-2 project were to build up capabilities in satellite system and subsystem design, and to develop remote sensing application technology. FORMOSAT-2 has two-metres panchromatic and eight metres multispectral resolution, plus an Imager of Sprite Upper Atmosphere Lightning (part of an international research project). The project commenced in 1999, before the launch of ROCSat-1. Astrium of France built the satellite, again with participation by Taiwanese engineers. The subsystems were built in France, and the solar panels and onboard computer in Taiwan. The bus, payload and complete spacecraft were assembled in Taiwan. FORMOSAT-2 was launched in May 2004.
The third and last project in the initial 15-year program is named ROCSat-3 (also named Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate, or COSMIC, and FORMOSAT-3). This comprises six LEO microsatellites collecting atmospheric data for weather prediction and for ionospheric, climate and gravity research. The objectives of the ROCSat-3 project included developing total program capability comprising program planning, program execution, components procurement and system integration and testing. The program commenced in 2000 with an overall cost estimated at $330m. Orbital Sciences of the US was contracted for $110m to design the constellation, to develop the bus (based on the Orbcomm bus) jointly with NSPO, to develop the payload instrument, and to oversee components manufacture in Taiwan. The non-flight prototype was built in the US and parts for all six flight models were supplied from the US, with all but the first being assembled in Taiwan. The constellation was launched in April 2006.
Three satellite programs were planned for this second phase of the national space program: • a GEO broadband communication satellite, probably in Ka-band (and with development of advanced ground segment technology as one objective), • a follow-on remote sensing satellite after ROCSat-2, and • a self-reliant two-micro-satellite development program (YAMSAT).
There are also reports that this second phase will include development of a small launcher capable of placing a 50 kg payload into LEO. Taiwan's first Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV) is said to be an upgrade based on existing Taiwanese sounding rockets (of which six have been launched), and in the same class of the Indian SLV-3. The inaugural launch is scheduled to take place during the latter stages of the 2004-2018 space program. China is unlikely to be pleased at the prospect of Taiwan gaining this capability. It labelled FORMOSAT-2 a “spy satellite” and attempted to pressure international satellite manufacturers to avoid the project.
YAMSAT is an educational project initiated on April 2001. The satellites are 10-centimeter cubes that weigh only 857 grams and carry a micro-spectrometer to measure the scattering of visible solar spectrum in the atmosphere for the analysis of atmospheric elements. The mission lifetime is one month. YAMSAT was scheduled to launch as a secondary payload on a Russian launch vehicle, but (no doubt under pressure from China) the Russian government objected and the launch plan was abandoned. No other appropriate launch vehicle has yet been identified, so there is no plan for a YAMSAT launch. The YAMSAT project however has already achieved its educational purposes.
Nothing is known of progress on the GEO broadband satellite and follow-on remote sensing satellite, or of the launcher development, thought to be in the second phase of the Taiwanese space program.
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THAILAND Thailand is a developing country of 65 million people and a GDP 27% the size of Australia’s. It has security issues with Myanmar, and with Karen rebels on the Myanmar border. It also has Muslim rebels on its southern border with Malaysia, where bombs occasionally cause havoc in the population.
Thailand also was a late starter in satellite communications. The first Thai-owned satellite, Thaicom-1, was launched in December 1993 by a private company granted an eight year exclusive licence and a 25 year concession.
Government ministries in Thailand with an interest in space include the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Science Technology and Environment (MoSTE), and the Ministry of Transport and Communications. In the mid-1990s the Ministry of Defence had its own Defence Space Centre and great ambitions to acquire communications and remote sensing satellites of its own. In September 1996 MoSTE received approval for a five-year remote sensing mission, called the Thai Remote Sensing Small Satellite (TRSSS) program, at a cost of USD116m. The plans of both Defence and MoSTE came undone when the economic crisis hit in 1997.
The French satellite manufacturer Astrium purchased from Spar Aerospace of Canada the incomplete design of TRSSS, and proposed to MoSTE a revised satellite with 5-metre resolution for the same cost as the original Spar proposal. MoSTE did not have the money, but nonetheless remained interested.
By 1999 there was recognition in Bangkok that coordination between Thai Ministries was desirable, not least because government resources were tight. In June 2000 the Thai Government approved the establishment of a GeoInformatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA, also known as the Thai Ministry of Science and Technology's Space Agency), to encompass the Remote Sensing Division of the NRCT and other units of government. The agency became operational in November 2000. Its initial annual budget was THB250m ($11.35m) and the total budget for the initial three-year period was in the region of $35-50m (which was around the level of current funding for the units and agencies merged into GISTDA). GISTDA has four divisions: geo-informatics, space technology (including a small satellite program), business development and administration.
GISTDA’s immediate priorities areas were remote sensing facilities on the ground and GIS, but it returned to the small satellite program in July 2004. It signed a contract with Astrium worth €128m (AUD212) for the long-planned remote sensing satellite, now called THEOS (Thailand Earth Observation System). THEOS is an optical satellite of 750 kg with 2m black-and-white resolution and 15m colour resolution. It will provide access to any part of Thailand in less than 2 days, and will support the missions of Thai government agencies in cartography, agriculture, forestry and fisheries. THEOS is ready for launch from Russia in late 2008.
There is also private and university space activity in Thailand. In 1995 Mahanakorn University of Technology (MUT, a private university established in 1990) and Thai Satellite Telecommunications Co Ltd established a joint venture to develop the educational and commercial applications of small satellites in Thailand for communications, Earth observation and training. They set up Thai Micro- Satellite Communication Co Ltd (TMSC) within the engineering school of MUT. TMSC contracted Surrey Satellite Technologies of the UK in November 1995 for its first microsatellite, initially named TMSat, which was launched in July 1998. TMSat carried store-and-forward communications and Earth observation payloads. After the economic crisis developed in 1997 Thai Satellite Telecommunications scaled back its undertaking to contribute 50% of the cost of TMSat to 25%; the satellite was then renamed Thai Paht.
MUT, through its Thai-Pat Satellite Research Centre, was at last report working on a Thai Paht-2 minisatellite, which it was funding itself with $3.4m of university money. Thai Paht-2 was expected to have a launch mass around 60 kg and to go into a sun synchronous orbit. MUT had planned for the satellite to carry an imaging payload and the prototype of a third generation mobile communication payload, but the design was being reconfigured in order to participate with SSTL in a small satellite constellation for disaster monitoring being part-funded by the UK Government. The current status of this project is unknown.
MUT signed an MoU with SaTReC in April 2000 on joint development of space technology.
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Thailand also has an interest in the regional cooperative "Small Multi-Mission Spacecraft” (SMMS), which has been under discussion since the original project was proposed by China, Pakistan and Thailand in 1992. In 1998 Pakistan, China, Iran, Korea, Mongolia and Thailand signed a "Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in Small Multi-Mission Satellite and Related Activities." The project aimed to design and build SMMS for remote sensing, telecommunications and military reconnaissance.
The first SMMS was to carry a low-resolution camera and an experimental telecommunications system on a standard Chinese CAST-968 platform. This mission would be totally devoted to civilian remote- sensing and communications experiments. Weighing 470kg, it was planned for launch on a Chinese booster in 2004 or 2005. The current status of this project is unknown.
VIETNAM Vietnam is a poor developing country with 86 million people and a GDP only 8% the size of Australia’s. Its Communist government has internal security concerns, as well as issues relating to narcotics with neighbouring countries.
Vietnam’s first communications satellite, Vinasat-1, was launched in April 2008 after years of planning.
Vietnam has an organisation working on space technology, the Space Technology Application Centre (STAC) within the Institute of Physics of the National Centre for Natural Science and Technology of Vietnam (NCST). STAC has 30 employees, and NCST has about 3,000.
Until a few years ago STAC’s interests were on the ground. Its focus was on • the design and manufacture of equipment for data acquisition and processing for remote sensing imagery, a microwave radiometer and other measuring equipment, • development of software for digital image processing, image calibration and correction, and GIS applications, and • applications of remote sensing and GIS technology.
STAC now has a microsatellite project which has been under discussion since 1999, when STAC proposed a joint pre-feasibility study with Surrey Satellite Technology Limited of the UK for the design of small satellites weighing 100 to 200 kg. The objective was to enable Vietnam to participate in the disaster monitoring constellation (named DMC) being established by SSTL with support from the British Government. The first satellites of the DMC project, purchased by Algeria, the UK, Nigeria and Turkey, were launched in 2003. Vietnam would like to participate in DMC-2. SSTL would build the satellite in the UK with training for Vietnamese engineers. This project would likely cost at least $10m (or $20m if a four metre resolution imager was to be added to the payload). Its current status is unknown.
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