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.
This is despite the fact that the Philippine Space Agency will be placed under the administrative supervision of the Office of the President (OP) and not as an attached unit of the DOST as originally intended.
Under the bill, the Philippine Space Agency office and its research facilities will be housed in at least 30 hectare of land within the Clark Special Economic Zone in Pampanga and Tarlac.
The Philippines is closer to the establishment of its own space agency with Senate Bill 1983 or the Philippine Space Act now hurdling second reading in the Senate.
