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@pirrer · 2026-10-17 02:30

In 2017, Taiwan launched FORMOSAT-5, the first satellite to carry a camera Taiwan built itself. Its first picture of Taipei was dotted with blobs of light. After image processing, the blobs turned out to be airplanes. Taiwan’s government watchdog, the Control Yuan, later estimated that the focus was off by about 1 millimeter. It said poorly managed procurement and calibration of the collimator, a ground-test device used to focus the camera before launch, could not be ruled out as an institutional factor. Eight years later, the Taiwan Space Agency (@TASA_Taiwan) built another camera. FORMOSAT-8’s first satellite launched on a SpaceX rocket on November 29, 2025 (Taiwan time), into a 561-kilometer orbit. Its black-and-white images have one-meter resolution. The collimator is now recalibrated before every major test, every six months, and after any earthquake above intensity 3 in Hsinchu. The money behind it is small. TASA’s 2026 budget is about NT$5.1 billion, roughly US$160 million, which is less than FORMOSAT-5 cost. That works out to about $1.80 for every $10,000 of Taiwan’s GDP. The OECD average for government civil space budgets is about $6.50. The plan is eight satellites by 2031, so the same place in Taiwan can be imaged up to three times a day.

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