DOST earmarks P840 M for microsatellite project

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) has programmed some P840 million for its three-year Philippine Microsat project that aims to launch two microsatellites into space, the first by next year and another in 2017.

Joel Marciano Jr., director of the University of the Philippines’ Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute and head of the Phl-Microsat project, said that Hokkaido University and the Tohoku University of Japan were on board the project since last year, providing technical expertise.

Marciano said the project will include the establishment of a Subic Ground Receiving Station or a PEDRO (Philippine Earth Data Resource and Observation Center), which will receive images captured by the microsatellites once they are launched into orbit.

The two Japanese universities will also take charge of launching the Phl Microsat-1 in 2016 and Phl Picrosat-2 in 2017.

The Phl Microsat project was initiated by the DOST’s Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development (PCIEERD), which tapped the UP-EEEI to spearhead the project and will provide the P840.82 million.

DOST Undersecretary Rowena Cristina Guevara, PCIEERD executive director, deputy executive director Raul Salubarse and Marciano held a joint video press conference with officials of Hokkaido University and Tohoku University to present the technical requirements and features of the country’s effort to launch a satellite, albeit a small one, into space.

Guevara said that while the Philippines had been overtaken by its ASEAN neighbors in launching data gathering satellites or microsatellites into space, she said that the country was not the last one, since Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia have none. Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam preceded the Philippines in such initiative.

Marciano said that a microsatellite was an affordable option for the Philippines to enter the space age, and have its own satellite collecting images from space, which would be used for Disaster Risk Response/Management, Remote Sensing for agriculture, forestry and marine resources, and weather monitoring.

Marciano said that the microsatellite can also monitor the country’s territorial waters, such as the West Philippine Sea, where China is currently undertaking reclamation despite the Philippines’ having filed for arbitration on China’s adverse claim over islands and atolls in the area.

He noted that DOST’s Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards (NOAH) and Disaster Risk Exposure Assessment for Mitigation (DREAM) purchase multi-spectral, high-resolution maps from foreign commercial providers.

Guevara said that the establishment of a Philippine space program leading toward the creation of a national space agency is not farfetched.

DOST meanwhile has expanded DREAM to come up with three-dimensional flood hazard maps and a comprehensive and integrated flood early warning system in 2016.