Island's new satellite sends back first pictures
Rocsat-2, Taiwan's latest satellite with potential military applications, has recently sent back its first batch of pictures showing the island's topography and sites such as the Presidential Office and the Taipei domestic airport.
The National Space Programme Office released copies of the images that Rocsat-2, Taiwan's second satellite, can take at a resolution of up to two metres in black and white and eight metres in colour.
National space office director Lee Luo-chuan said, weather permitting, the satellite could provide a picture of the whole island using four adjacent image strips.
Mr Luo, however, declined to say whether Rocsat-2 would provide Taiwan and the US with data on military facilities and deployments on the mainland.
'The satellite is designed for scientific research - to provide useful data over the topography of Taiwan; and its data can be used for applications for various fields, including agricultural and forestry planning, and even natural disaster evaluation,' he said.
But Taiwan's United Daily News, quoting an unnamed source, said detecting military bases on the mainland was one major mission of Rocsat-2.
It said the satellite could take three-dimensional images of military facilities.
More importantly, the newspaper report said, it could monitor the same base in the same position every day, so authorities would be able to follow movements at a particular military base.
Space office officials said the NT$2.6 billion (HK$608 million) satellite was able to take photos of 82 per cent of surface structures on Earth.
The satellite is also known as the 'Big Eye of Er Lang Sheng', referring to a legendary Chinese deity capable of using his third eye to look for a target thousands of kilometres away. It was launched by the US on May 21 into its orbit at an altitude of 891km.
