The locally built Maya-3 and Maya-4 cube satellites (CubeSats) of the Philippine government were launched to the International Space Station on August 29 at 3:14 P.M. (PST) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket’s Dragon C208 as part of SpaceX Commercial Resupply Mission-23 (SpX-23).
The Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on Friday, June 11, in a virtual signing ceremony held simultaneously in Manila and Tokyo.
The DOST said the satellite project allows for the identification of ships and the locations they have visited -- information that is useful in guarding the country’s territorial waters against illegal vessels.
The Synthetic Aperture Radar and Automatic Identification System for Innovative Terrestrial Monitoring and Maritime Surveillance (SAR with AIS) Project has improved the country’s terrestrial and maritime monitoring and the applications of the project’s data are numerous.
The date 21 February 2021 (1:36 AM Philippine Standard Time) is now forever etched in the history of space science in the Philippines with the launch of the country’s second cube satellite, called Maya-2 CubeSat, that was developed by three Filipino student engineers.
The Philippines marked another scientific milestone on Sunday, February 21, at exactly 1:36 in the morning, as the country’s second cube satellite (CubeSat) Maya-2 was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the S.S. Katherine Johnson Cynus spacecraft.
High-impact technologies -- from understanding lightning and thunderstorms to the first Filipino-made nanosatellites – are expected to be launched and deployed this year, according to the DOST.
UP electrical engineering professor Joel Joseph S. Marciano served as director of the Advanced Science and Technology Institute (ASTI) of the DOST and led the country’s space program.
It was also in August 2019 that a bill creating the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) was signed into law. The PhilSA, however, was placed under the administrative supervision of the Office of the President (OP) and not as an attached unit of the DOST as originally intended.
