Diwata: The first Philippine Satellite

Sample photo of a micro satellite from newsarchive.medill.northwestern.edu

Diwata: The first Philippine Satellite is on its way and it will be called “diwata”(in English “fairy”). This is one of the 2 microsatellite that Philippines is planning to put into orbit. The 2nd satellite has no nickname yet.

According to DOST Secretary Mario Montejo, they are planning to launch Diwata on july 2016. Diwata also known as “PHL-Microsat-1” is a microsatellite or a miniaturize satellite. This kind of satellite is very small which weight below 100Kg. Diwata will have a mass of around 50Kg. The satellite is part of the Department of Science and Technology’s Philippine Scientific Earth Observation Micro-Satellite (PHL-Microsat) Program. This project is a partnership between  Hokkaido University and Tohoku University of Japan.

Diwata is intended to be used for disaster management such as accessing damages made by typhoons and for national security purposes. This also can be use for weather forecasting. A ground receiving station called Philippines Earth Data Resource Observation (PEDRO) will be built as a part of the project.

Satellite Cost
This 3year project will cost around Php840 million but the Japanese universities  Tohoku University and Hokkaido University will shoulder Php516 million which is around 60% of the total cost. This is the reason why they used mini or miniature size to lower the cost.

Benefits of having our own Satellite
It may seem extravagant for us to have our own satellite but to give you an idea, 30mins of satellite data cost around Php58 million, we are spending 2 billion pesos to acquire satellite data. This is a very big savings on the long run. Another benefit is that it will enable our farmer to be efficient by knowing the type of crop to be planted in each season by studying the data gathered by diwata.

Technical Details
Name: Diwata
Orbit: Low Earth Orbit 400 – 420km altitude
Mass: 50Kg
Speed: 25,200 Kph(will pass Philippines 4 times a day)
Instruments:  High Precision Telescope, Spaceborne Multispectral Imager, Wide Field Camera