Bill eyes space agency for Philippines

MANILA, Philippines - Agham Party-list Rep. Angelo Palmones has proposed the creation of the Philippine Space Commission to promote the peaceful use and exploitation of space and advance the knowledge of space through research.

“A national aeronautical and space science program is not a monopoly of developed countries. It stands more as a trademark of a government, whether rich or poor, that has big dreams for its people,” said Palmones, author of House Bill 6725.

“Space science combines intense scientific discovery with entrepreneurship, inspiration and excitement. It has served as driver for the development of technologies that have changed the world,” Palmones said.

Palmones said space science will result to widespread economic benefits, from the most sensitive detectors of light and radio waves to the fastest supercomputers and the internet.

“The excitement that the field brings has inspired the youth to choose careers in science and technology (S&T) contributing to the knowledge economy of nations,” the lawmaker said, adding that “space science has an enormous potential to be a tool for furthering economic growth in developing nations, like the Philippines.”

Palmones recalled that years after 1945, when the Chinese civil war devastated that country and had led to secession of a Nationalist government to Taiwan in 1949, even while recovering from an underdeveloped market economy China drafted its “Twelve-Year-Plan for Chinese Aerospace.”

The lawmaker noted that the first Chinese-crewed flight program began several decades later culminating in the successful 2003 flight aboard Shenzhou 5. This achievement, he said, has made China the third country to independently send humans into outer space.

“India, too, is poised to become the second country after the United States to send humans to the Moon by 2020. Even the rest of our Asian neighbors, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand, have advanced and centralized space agencies of their own,” he said.

Likewise, Palmones said Bangladesh has a Space Research and Remote Sensing Organization (SPARRSO), established in 1980, that works closely with JAXA, NASA and the ESA. Sri Lanka has its own aeronautics and space agency whose immediate goal is to construct and launch two satellites by 2015 after signing an exclusive partnership agreement with China’s state-owned China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC) for the design, manufacturing and launching of the satellites.

“It is the vision by our very own Filipino astronomers, here and abroad, to have a self-reliant and coherent space program that will play a pivotal role in national economic development. The gateway of creating the historic Philippine Space Agency is embodied in this bill,” Palmones said.