First Vietnam firm to launch nanosat into orbit
By Van Oanh - The Saigon Times Daily
HANOI – After four years of research and production, FPT University – a unit of Vietnamese telecommunications firm FPT – will become the country’s first private firm to have a nanosatellite launched into orbit late next month.
Unlike VNPT’s two telecommunication satellites which were purchased abroad and sent into orbit for business purposes, FPT’s nanosat will be mainly for research.
Having a dimension of 10x10x10 cm and a weight of just one kilogram, Nanosat F-1 is expected to send signals back to the ground control station and take low-resolution photos of the earth with a data transmission speed of 1,200 bits per second when in orbit. If this satellite works well, a new satellite will be produced with more complicated features.
This nanosat is scheduled to be launched on Japan’s HII-B rocket at the Tanegashima Space Center on July 21. Therefore, it will be transported to Japan late this month and launched together with four other small satellites.
Nguyen Dang Vang, deputy head of the National Assembly Committee on Science, Technology and Environment, said the launch of the nanosat was meaningful, especially to the supervision of ships at sea and the control and prevention of forest fires.