Vietnam to launch sea monitoring satellite from Japan next spring

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ANKARA (AA) - Vietnam will launch its sea monitoring satellite from Japan as early as next spring, local media reported on Friday.

Indigenously-built NanoDragon satellite was delivered to Japan last Wednesday from where it will be launched into space, according to daily Vietnam News.

The 3.8kg nano-layer CubeSat satellite was developed by Vietnam National Space Centre (VNSC) under the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology.

It will be transferred to Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and is expected to be launched into orbit from the Uchinoura Space Centre in Japan’s Kagoshima province before March 2022.

The VNSC researchers carried the whole process of researching, designing, integrating, and testing in Vietnam before delivering it to Japan for launch.

The Vietnamese researchers conducted functional tests on the satellite between March 9 and April 9.

“The satellite was developed with the purpose of demonstrating it could use micro-satellite beam technology to receive the Automatic Identification System (AIS) signal to track and monitor activities at sea,” the report said.

At the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan, the satellite also passed pre-launch environmental testing.