Finally after almost ten (10) years after the first satellite TiungSAT-1
RazakSAT to orbit the Near equatorial orbit (NEqO – 635km from the earth surface ) also known as Low Earth Orbit.
Check for detail about Orbit [wikipedia] and Low Earth Orbit
RazakSAT is planned to orbit the earth in NEqO orbit at a nominal altitude of 685 km and 9 degrees (targeted) inclination. RazakSAT provides a high number ...
White Paper on RazakSAT[pdf] Long awaited moment finally come ..
Well, it just started the sequence to transport it to Launch Site.
From the News Strait Times and also New Sabah Times
KOTA KINABALU: Malaysia will send into space the world's first remote sensing satellite to orbit the equator on April 21, providing high resolution images of Malaysia that can be used to provide information on land management, forestry and security.
The 190kg satellite, RazakSAT, which will orbit the equator every 100 minutes, will also be used to gather photographic data on resource development, conservation and fish migration.
Named after Malaysia's second prime minister Tun Abdul Razak, the satellite was developed by the Aeronautical Engineering Sdn Bhd (ATSB), a company under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. It will be launched using a US rocket named Falcon-1.
RazakSAT will orbit at an altitude of 685km after it takes off from its launch pad at Kwajalein Island in the Marshall Islands.
ATSB chief executive officer Datuk Dr Ahmad Sabirin Arshad said the satellite could be used to provide important information on Malaysia.
"The orbit for satellites is usually north to south, and this is known as the polar orbit.
"Malaysia is at the equator, so we should be able to see the benefits of a satellite (that orbits the equator). It will provide important details for analysis," he said yesterday.
The satellite which left the Royal Malaysian Air Force base in Subang at 10.15am on a C-130H military aircraft, touched down at the international airport here at 1.50pm for re-fuelling, before continuing a 7-hour journey to Guam.
RMAF Lt-Col Raja Mohar Raja Rahman is the captain of the flight, which will then make its final 5-hour journey to Kwajalein Island.
Earlier, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovations Datuk Dr Maximus Ongkili said RazakSAT was a testimony of the talent and capability of local scientists in space technology.
He was speaking at the Subang Air Base before sending off the satellite on board a RMAF aircraft.
RazakSat is equipped with a medium-sized aperture camera (MAC) to capture high resolution images of the Earth along the near equatorial orbit and can be useful especially to the ministry's Malaysian Remote Sensing Agency, which conducts research in satellite applications in agriculture, natural disasters, fish migration, security as well as land and forest management.
Dr Ongkili said the MAC onboard RazakSAT had a better focusing capability compared to the previous satellite, the experimental TiungSAT.
Two small satellites would also be launched together with RazakSAT from Kwajalein for educational purposes.
One of them CubeSAT was developed by ATSB, while the other, InnoSAT, was developed by Universiti Sains Malaysia, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and Universiti Malaysia Perlis, both of which were funded by the ministry.
The prime minister and cabinet members are expected to follow the launch from the National Space Centre in Kg Sg Lang, Banting.
What to expect ?
Shall be about the same level as this one..
this is the 5m resolution .
GeoEYE product of 5m resolution
from GeoEYE project, which is been adopted by Google Earth.
http://www.geoeye.com/CorpSite/gallery/default.aspx
more less 2m resolution will be twice the quality of the above image ?
let's wait .. if I recalled correctly... the first image of RazakSAT will be featured in "FrontPage" of every newspaper in Malaysia..
wait until 21st April 2009..
HawkEYE is not a derivative of any the above satellite though.. .. 8-)
p/s : how much is the cost for GeoEYE and what will the RazakSAT total cost ?
might also one to consider the following into the account :
-- lifetime of a satellite.
-- total payload.
-- the purpose.
source :
1. Medium-sized aperture camera for earth observation
2. Development of engineering model of medium-sized aperture camera system
3. GeoEYE
4. RazakSAT Detail from ATSB.
Medium-sized aperture camera for earth observation
Kim, Eugene D.; Choi, Young-Wan; Kang, Myung-Seok; Kim, Ee-Eul; Yang, Ho-Soon; Rasheed, Ad. Aziz Ad.; Arshad, Ahmad Sabirin
In: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Space Optics (ICSO 2004), 30 March - 2 April 2004, Toulouse, France. Ed.: B. Warmbein. ESA SP-554, Noordwijk, Netherlands: ESA Publications Division, ISBN 92-9092-865-4, 2004, p. 137 - 140
Satrec Initiative and ATSB have been developing a medium-sized aperture camera (MAC) for an earth observation payload on a small satellite. Developed as a push-broom type high-resolution camera, the camera has one panchromatic and four multispectral channels. The panchromatic channel has 2.5m, and multispectral channels have 5m of ground sampling distances at a nominal altitude of 685km. The 300mm-aperture Cassegrain telescope contains two aspheric mirrors and two spherical correction lenses. With a philosophy of building a simple and cost-effective camera, the mirrors incorporate no light-weighting, and the linear CCDs are mounted on a single PCB with no beam splitters. MAC is the main payload of RazakSAT to be launched in 2005. RazakSAT is a 180kg satellite including MAC, designed to provide high-resolution imagery of 20km swath width on a near equatorial orbit (NEqO). The mission objective is to demonstrate the capability of a high-resolution remote sensing satellite system on a near equatorial orbit. This paper describes the overview of the MAC and RarakSAT programmes, and presents the current development status of MAC focusing on key optical aspects of Qualification Model.
Available online 17 November 2004.
Abstract
SaTReCi and ATSB are developing medium-sized aperture camera (MAC) system for earth observation. Following the first model, the development of the engineering model (EM) was completed. The optical subsystem incorporates a conventional approach of using low-expansion optical and structural materials. It is a 300-mm on-axis system with two aspheric mirrors and two field correction lenses. It has five linear detectors aligned on its focal plane together with proximity electronics. The electronics subsystem consists of five modules; two for management and control in cold redundancy, two for image data storage and one for power supply. EM was developed to have a storage capacity of 16 Gbits, which can be easily increased to 32 Gbits by adding memory packs for following models. EM weighs about 41.9 kg and consumes about 45.4 W of peak power.
Characteristics and Capabilities
Spatial characteristics:
2.5m for panchromatic and 5.0m for multi-spectral with swath width of 2.0km. This allows for mapping scales of 1:25000 and 1:50000.
Spectral characteristic:
Spectral range covers visible to near infrared. Main features of the Earth can be identified and classified with advanced processing.im1
Radiometric resolution:
8-bit. This enables Earth features to be represented in 256 digital levels.
Temporal resolution:
Up to 14 times of imaging opportunities per day over tropical area in ±9° latitude from the equator. Tilting is possible for further deviations of up to ±30°.
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