AT a recent forum, a science high-school student commented that for ordinary people, space is unreachable and very distant, considering it is high above the Earth, and that having a space program seems to be difficult.
A scientist answered: It is not really unreachable and difficult because we are just doing our work in launching microsatellites to space through our computers and laptops.
The Philippines is finally conquering space. It is joining the international community in the “technological revolution in space” by deploying microsatellites—with the third, the Diwata-2, to be launched today.
Signatory to Moon Treaty
ACTUALLY, the Philippines is not new in space technology. On April 23, 1980, or almost 40 years ago, it joined its first and only ratified international space treaty in the United Nations. The country was one of only 11 original country-signatories to the Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, or the Moon Treaty, that recognized the use and exploration of the moon and other celestial bodies in accordance to international law.
Back then, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) was just roughly eight years young. And before this agency was even recognized, the country only had the Manila Observatory, established in 1865, as its only formal meteorological and astronomical research and services institution, led by Fr. Federico Faura, SJ.
Fast-forward to 1996: the Mabuhay Satellite Corp., under PLDT, procured the satellite Agila-1 from Indonesia’s company PT Pasifik Satelit Nusantara to enhance communications in the country.
It was the first satellite of the country that was acquired while it was in orbit. However, its operations ended in 1998.
LiDAR program
ALMOST two decades later, in 2012 the Philippines sent 10 engineers to the United Kingdom, where they worked with the UK Meteorological Office and learned about light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology that uses space data.
That training produced 920 LiDAR expert processors in the country, under the $80-million Philippine-LiDAR program, said Undersecretary Dr. Rowena Cristina L. Guevara of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) for Research and Development at the National Science and Technology Week (NSTW) space forum in July.
The data gathered could assess agricultural, aquatic, coastal, and hazards, such as typhoons, tsunami, landslides and many other applications.
With the Philippines being ahead in LiDAR technology in the region, it trained Asean scientists in the technology.
In 2014 the country entered partnerships with Japan’s Hokkaido and Tohoku universities to develop its microsatellites and nanosatellites, Guevara added.
2016: Year of renewed space landscape
IN the age of technological advancement, 2016 proved to be a big year for the Philippines’s renewed space landscape.
Diwata-1—the first Philippine microsatellite that weighs 50 kg—was launched to the International Space Station on March 23, 2016, and deployed into orbit from the ISS the following month on April 27, 2016.
Afterward, the smaller 10-cubic centimeter cube satellite (CubeSat)—the Maya-1 nanosatellite—was deployed into orbit in space from the ISS on August 10.
Science Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña told the BusinessMirror during Maya-1’s deployment: “We [the Philippines] do not want to be left out…we want to build our space technology capability” in order for the country to benefit from it.
Maya-1 is one of three constellation nanosatellites in the Birds-2 project of the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan. The other two were developed by Bhutan and Malaysian scientists.
Kaye Kristine Vergel, researcher for Diwata-1 and 2, told the BusinessMirror: “Diwata-1 is working in space and has been taking pictures of the different places in the Philippines and even in other places around the world.”
Joven Javier, one of the scientists who has been working on the Maya-1 project, told the BusinessMirror in an online teleconference that nanosatellites, besides being a communication channel, data-gatherer and an eye in the sky, “are used to prove something that is not yet working in space. It is experimental and once it is useful, the technology can be used in bigger microsatellites.”
Diwata-2 will be launched into space on October 29. With a longer lifespan than its predecessor, “The Diwata-2 will stay in space for five years,” said Dr. Joel Joseph Marciano Jr., director of the Advanced Science and Technology Institute of the DOST.
PHL-Microsat Program
THE launch in 2016 of the country’s first microsatellite, Diwata-1, by Filipino scientists in Japan, was a huge step toward realizing a space-oriented, information and data-based country.
The Philippines’s Scientific Earth Observation Microsatellite (PHL-Microsat) Program is a three-year program funded by the DOST with a budget of P800 million.
“We have a total of six satellites,” Marciano, who heads the program, said. He explained that when building a satellite, two models are made—the flight model and the engineering model.
“The flight model is the one that goes into orbit, while the engineering model goes into the lab and continues to be a platform for research, development and enhancement,” he added.
Besides Diwata-1 and Maya-1, the launching of Diwata-2 will showcase another feat for the Filipino nation, he noted.
PHL-Microsat program is a collaboration between the Philippines’s DOST, University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman and Japan’s Hokkaido University and Tohoku University.
Guevara underscored the speedy development of activities for the space program that took place in just four years—from the LiDAR in 2012 to the launching and deployment of Diwata-1 to space in 2016.
Proposed Philippine Space Act
HOWEVER, despite its early track record in astronomy and space technology, and the recent deployment of Diwata-1 and Maya-1, the Philippines is still lagging behind its neighbors in space technology.
Its development of a national space agency has been neglected, and its creation of a space program—which involves constructing and launching satellites and honing human resources, has started only recently.
Filipino astrophysicist Dr. Rogel Mari Sese, who has been pushing for the establishment of the country’s space agency, told the BusinessMirror, “The Philippines has been lagging behind in terms of developing a concrete space program. In Southeast Asia alone, our country is the only major nation that does not have a space agency.”
Five of the 10 Asean countries have long developed their space programs or have deployed satellites in space. They are Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand.
Sese is working for the enactment of the proposed Philippine Space Act. The Senate is discussing at the plenary Senate Bill 1983, an “Act Establishing the Philippine Space Development and Utilization Policy and Creating the Philippine Space Agency, and for other Purposes.”
It has a counterpart bill in the House of Representatives.
Initially, in the absence of a law, a National Space Development Program is being funded by the DOST to develop policies that will be used in the future space agency.
Space agency and development
AT a briefing during Maya-1’s deployment into space, de la Peña said the enactment of the proposed Space Act is a top priority of the DOST.
“We are trying to build our own capability in building satellites because we foresee that we really need a go for this. We are also going to the next higher levels,” de la Peña said.
“This is just the start. Actually this is part of our long-term sustainability program for our space technology-development agenda and we look forward to a continuation of this,” he said.
The proposed space law encompasses six development key areas—including national security and development, hazard management and climate studies, space research and development, space industry-capacity building, space education and awareness, and international cooperation.
Sese cited that “events such as typhoons and the deteriorating security situation in the West Philippine Sea have shown the importance of having space-technology capabilities, and how vital it is in developing our nation.”
He added that even Bangladesh already has its own sovereign telecommunications satellite.
He said the next step for the Philippines after the launching of microsatellites should be to finally establish the Philippine Space Agency.
With a proposed budget of P10 billion for five years, the Philippine Space Agency is proposed to be built at the Bases Conversion and Development Authority within the Clark Special Economic Zone in Pampanga and Tarlac.
“It will be at least 30 hectares of land for building and research facility,” Sese said.
Microsatellites: ’Cutting-edge sats that bring technological revolution in space’
Hokkaido University’s Prof. Yukihiro Takahashi acknowledged the value of microsatellites like Diwata-1, saying “it is a cutting-edge satellite. It is not just for student experiments but for operational satellites.”
“A technological revolution is going on in space” owing to the cutting-edge microsatellites, Takahashi said at the NSTW space forum in July.
He said it is not difficult to construct a microsatellite because it can be made in one or two years only—compared to the large or conventional satellites, which take more than 10 years to build.
Takahashi was proud to acknowledge the Filipino scientists who made Diwata-1 in Japan in just one year.
Besides, large satellites cost hundreds of millions of dollars, while microsatellites only cost from $3 million to $5 million.
Also, while big satellites require 1,000 persons to construct, microsatellites need only “10 persons around one table who can understand both sides of its development and application.”
What’s more, a microsatellite’s operation is simple: “With one laptop computer we can operate a microsatellite in any place as long as we can connect to an Internet.”
Takahashi added that there is a current “world trend” in the use of microsatellites and nanosatellites, deployment of which in space has been increasing. He said the United States alone has launched 152 nanosatellites in space.
‘Milestones’
VERGEL, who designed the calibration and tests of Diwata-1’s and Diwata-2’s cameras, is proud of the “milestones” they have achieved with the first two microsatellites.
With 14,492 images of the Philippines captured by the Diwata-1, Vergel noted they are equivalent to 32 percent of the country’s land area.
“It’s a great feat!” Vergel said. “We have been assessing the images of Semirara Island. We’re also observing the water quality of Laguna Lake,” she explained, adding that the images obtained by Diwata-1 in space are correlated to the data obtained by the specific targets on the ground.
Vergel cited their assessment of the turbidity of Laguna Lake.
“We produced a turbidity map out of Diwata-1 images while conducting measurements on the ground and utilizing other satellite images, as well,” she said, referring to other images produced from other satellites.
“What we want to do is to utilize satellite images and relate them to physical parameters,” Vergel said.
On the other hand, the nanosatellite Maya-1 proved to be an international collaboration and cooperation.
Maya-1 was part of the Birds-2 project developed by Filipino, Bhutanese and Malaysian scientists in Japan. The latter two countries also have their respective nanosatellites, which completed the three-satellite constellation from the three countries.
A cube satellite that fits in one’s palm, Maya-1 has been orbiting around the Earth and is collecting data. It can be communicated with four to five times a day. The other two nanosatellites in the constellation can also collect data from the Philippines and share the data to each other.
“In Maya-1, we also put a two-way radio system where one can send messages, such as SOS, without relying on terrestrial communication like cellular sites, and forward [the messages] to where they need to be sent, and report the same message to the ground station,” Javier explained.
Upgrade through Diwata-2
DIWATA-2 will be an upgrade of the current Diwata-1 in space.
According to Lorenzo Sabug Jr., a researcher of PHL-Microsat and who contributed to the development of experimental payloads for Diwata-2, “It has the same payload for the earth observation but the cameras, called Space-borne Multispectral Imager [SMI] with liquid crystal tunable filter, is now upgraded with an enhanced resolution camera.”
Sabug told the BusinessMirror the Diwata-2 cameras have increased spatial resolution that can produce sharper images.
Vergel said the camera has a unique feature, which makes Diwata microsatellites special.
“The camera our Diwata microsatellites have can be tuned to our desired frequency for image capture,” Vergel said. This means they can track a specific spectral signature that can address the health of certain vegetation in a land area.
Deployable solar array panels are also installed in Diwata-2, which can add power to the microsatellite and support the additional payload attached to it.
Regarding additional payload, Diwata-1 and Diwata-2 engineer and researcher Ariston Gonzalez told the BusinessMirror, “We attached an experimental sun sensor to know the microsatellite’s position with respect to the sun. With this, we can coordinate with the microsatellite to a pointing mode where we can maneuver it.”
One big difference of Diwata-1 and Maya-1 compared to Diwata-2 is their position in space. Both Diwata-1 and Maya-1 are in the low-earth orbit at 404 kilometers altitude from the ground.
However, Diwata-2 will be orbiting at an altitude of 620 kilometers and will give the advantage of a longer five-year life compared to Diwata-1’s 18-month life in orbit, and wider coverage for communication.
“If we have favorable conditions in space, Diwata-1 could last almost three years,” Marciano added.
Delburg Mitchao said unfavorable conditions occur when satellites experience extreme environmental settings in space as it orbits around the Earth.
Diwata-2’s launching on Oct. 29
MITCHAO, also an engineer and researcher for PHL-Microsat program who designed and tested the microsatellites’ thermal subsystems, said Diwata-2 is already “integrated in the rocket [Japan’s H-IIA F40 rocket] at Tanegashima Space Center” in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan.
He told the BusinessMirror that Diwata-2 was turned over to Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) on August 30 and is set to be launched on October 29, between 12:08 and 12:20 Philippine Standard Time.
“It will piggyback with Japan’s Gosat-2 [Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite] and propel it to its 620 km altitude for orbit,” Vergel said.
The main advantage of Diwata-2 at this altitude, besides its sun-synchronous orbit feature, is that “it would enable itself to have a fixed visit interval. Which means that for every 16 days it will hover the same spot over the Earth.”
Diwata-1 does not have a fixed visit interval time.
‘Pedro’
NASH Frederic Prado, ground station engineer, is part of the team that works with the ground segment operations for Diwata-1 and handles the operations and maintenance of the ground-receiving station called Philippine Earth Data Resource and Observation Center (Pedro).
Prado operates the antenna and receives the images from the satellites. He is also part of the team responsible in distributing the data to various government agencies when needed.
Besides this, Diwata’s product development team also shares a big role in processing the images they receive every day.
Dr. Gay Jane Perez, head of the product development division and who oversees this department, said in a recent interview, “these products are the closest to what we can see from up above.”
‘Stamina’ to sustain space program
BOTH Sese and Marciano pointed out that in creating the space agency and building satellites, sustaining them must be supported by different programs.
For Marciano, the next step for PHL-Microsat is having the Space Technology and Applications Mastery Innovation and Advancement (Stamina) program.
According to him, some of its components involve the localization of technologies that have been learned and acquired abroad.
He explained: “One way to address the sustainability efforts is to try more and build more of these systems here locally [in the country] with the idea of translating the know-how and matching the universities to the industries.”
If universities can design and go hand-in-hand with the industry who will build and manufacture satellites or their components, Marciano said, then there will be a new market that will emerge, thus, creating more jobs for Filipino engineers and scientists.
“By trying to localize the technologies, using whatever capabilities and resources that are available locally, then that’s one way we can have for a better chance of sustainability,” he explained.
The PHL-Microsat program’s current P800-million budget also includes the establishment of laboratories and building of infrastructure to continue whatever the country has started.
Plan to manufacture satellites in PHL
GONZALEZ echoed Marciano’s statements. “What we’ve done with Diwata-1 so far goes beyond the capturing [of data]. We’ve started to come up with a curriculum to share what we have learned so far and it is available at the University of the Philippines [UP] where it is an elective for students,” he explained.
Gonzalez expressed hope the curriculum will become a full-fledged program to facilitate growth in the space sector.
“Besides being an educational tool, we will use this to enable local industries since we envision to manufacture satellites locally,” he noted.
Balik Scientist Leo Almazan, who is helping create the ground station for microsatellites in the country, agreed that as an enabler a curriculum for the space program has to be formulated in the country.
“We need to integrate the students’ curriculum in the ECE [Electronics and Communication Engineering] to the space program in order to develop expertise in the country,” Almazan said during the NSTW forum.
He added this will also protect the space program from brain drain.
Marciano explained: “We have invested part of the funds in laboratories in the university [University of the Philippines] because we need to sustain this effort in terms of generating manpower.”
He said that the country, in order to sustain the program, must get students into the stream and push them out of the university into research institutions, into research industries, into government institutions like ASTI and, in the future, into the Philippine Space Agency.
“The space agency will not survive without warm bodies being generated in our local universities that will be relevant to the mandate and functions of the space agency,” Marciano noted.
One of the components of the Stamina for space program is an inter-university partnership, wherein faculty members in various universities can enroll in the program available at UP and take their graduate degree, wherein they actually build satellites.
“We can already localize satellite [making]. They [faculty members] can build it [satellite] here, take it back to their universities, teach it and be involved in future programs. By growing that base, we can have many universities trying to feed into this pool,” Marciano added.
Through this program, Marciano aims to train an entire work force that is prepared for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in terms of using data, leveraging information, and merging physical and cyber infrastructure in order to build smarter cities and systems.
Undersecretary Guevara echoed Marciano’s statement during the NSTW space forum.
“We expect that soon Dr. Marciano will open the microsatellite laboratory in UP. Actually he is now involving other universities in the program. We are expecting that from the 16 people we sent to Japan [to make the microsatellites], we are going to involve a thousand scientists and engineers in the space program,” she said.
Foreign collaboration
AT this stage, although its space law is yet to be passed, the Philippines, through the DOST, is already deep into developing its expertise and foreign links in space program.
During the NSTW in July, the DOST held a space forum—its first—in order to “provide awareness of the presence of the space agency bill” in Congress and to learn from foreign space experts, DOST Assistant Secretary Dr. Leah Buendia, for International Cooperation, told the BusinessMirror in a recent interview.
With the presence of foreign space experts at the forum, Buendia said, “We would like to know the experiences of the countries that have space agencies; what are their good practices that will be beneficial to us. There are exchanges between our scientists and those of other countries.”
Present at the forum were space experts from Russia, Japan, the United Kingdom, Thailand, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration. A representative from Lao PDR was present, although it has no space program yet, to help the country under the Asean principle of “Asean helps Asean.”
According to Buendia, the Philippines signed separate memoranda of understanding with Japan, Russia, the UK and Thailand, which already have their respective space agency, for different levels of collaboration—such as in training, exchange of scientists, joint research and joint fora.
With Japan, the country’s tie-ups are with universities, where students are sent to pursue their masteral or doctoral degrees, and are trained in the construction of microsatellites. The universities of Hokkaido and Tohoku trained the Filipino students in the construction of the Diwata-1, Diwata-2 microsatellites and Maya-1 nanosatellite.
“In a space technology, it is not just for one country to develop. A collaboration of several partners is needed,” Guevara said.
In fact, the Philippines is planning to become a hub for disaster-risk reduction because it experiences all sorts of disasters, she added.
Beyond launching satellites: Solving socio-economic problems
The advantage of having a satellite goes beyond just having images and processing them as references for different government agencies.
Prado told the BusinessMirror that as the person who receives and distributes the satellite images, “I saw firsthand how [they] are used for rescue operations during disasters, and assist various government agencies.”
Perez added: “If you have the means to measure images and data in a comprehensive means as that of a satellite, the benefits will cascade [to different sectors and needs]. You know what’s happening and can act on a timely manner, prevent losses, recover if there’s a way to intervene and it goes down the line and eventually help the Philippines as a whole.”
For his part, Marciano believes that solving economic problems through space technology goes beyond just launching satellites into space.
“What we want our countrymen to appreciate is that these investments are being made because of a long-term view for our country, where we want to be in the future,” Marciano said.
“We want our policies, decisions and technologies to be based on evidence and science so that they can be more responsive to the needs of the community,” he noted.
Getting data and information is making the Philippines an information-based society—to value knowledge and information as tools that will be wielded to better Filipino lives.
Marciano aims to address this kind of poverty—not just economic poverty, but also information poverty.
“We should address information poverty because the lack of information makes us less competitive as a country,” Marciano said. If a country does not have accurate and timely information it will not be responsive to its needs.
“Information and data are very valuable resource. We can serve our country better if we have actionable information in our hands,” Marciano explained.
• Science reporter Stephanie Tumampos holds a BS in Applied Physics from the University of the Philippines-Los Baños and MS in Environmental Engineering from UP Diliman. She received the first prize (Individual Category) in the recent First Bantog Science for the People Awards.
• Lyn Resurreccion has been a Science Editor for 20 years, and has steered the BusinessMirror’s science coverage since the paper’s founding 13 years ago. Under her supervision, that coverage won the Institutional Category in the Bantog Media Awards. She has won several awards for outstanding science journalism, including the “Faces of Biotechnology” in 2016, and the former DOST Media Awards in Professional Category for Print in 2005.
Image credits: PHL-Microsat, Lyn Resurreccion