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Orbital
Awarded Taiwanese ROCSAT-3 Satellite Contract
The National Space
Program Office (NSPO) of Taiwan, Republic of China, has awarded the
Orbital Sciences Corporation a US$56  million
contract for the Republic of China Satellite
(ROCSAT-3)/Constellation Observing System for Meteorology,
Ionosphere and Climate (COSMIC) program.
The ROCSAT-3/COSMIC
program will use a constellation of six remote sensing
microsatellites to collect atmospheric data for weather prediction
and for ionosphere, climate and gravity research.
Under the terms of
the contract, Orbital's Space Systems Group will be responsible for
constellation design and analysis, joint  development
of the spacecraft bus with NSPO, payload instrument development and
oversight of components made by Taiwan local vendors. Orbital will
also provide assistance with system integration, satellite
integration and testing in Taiwan, early in-orbit checkout,
satellite positioning and mission operations. Orbital and NSPO plan
to launch the six satellites in early 2005. The satellites are
designed with an expected in-orbit operational life span of five
years.
The
ROCSAT-3/COSMIC satellites are based on the Orbital Sciences
MicroStar spacecraft platform, which is designed to be launched in
multiple units or as an auxiliary payload. Each satellite will carry
three instruments: a
GPS receiver, an ionospheric photometer and a tri-band beacon. The
satellites will be commanded from an operations center in Taiwan and
data will be relayed to a facility in Boulder, Colorado for analysis
and archiving. This data will be made freely available to the
international scientific community in near real-time.
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