TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – National Chung Hsing University announced Friday that Taiwan’s space telescope VERTECS reached orbit via a Japanese rocket on June 12, and is relaying images with great clarity.
The mission is led by Japan's Kyushu Institute of Technology with multiple industry partners from Taiwan and Japan. The collaboration is part of the Ministry of Education UAAT-KOOU program on space science and data applications, per CNA.
NCHU President Jan Fuh-Jyh (詹富智) said the system is developed in Taiwan. He said this initiative underscores Taiwan’s growing importance in space data science, according to the NCHU press release.
Space telescopes are launched into space to see things beyond Earth more clearly. The Earth's bright atmosphere blocks dimly lit objects in space.
The VERTECS platform provides a wide field of view and will stream images over the next year. The data should help explain the background light and evolution of the universe.
Project lead and NCHU physics Professor Hashimoto Tetsuya (橋本哲也) said the Earth's light pollution makes ground observation difficult. He added that the system finds missing data, then retransmits to complete the image.
Student researcher Chuang Che-hao (莊哲豪) said National Tsing Hua University and NCHU spent six months developing the system. He said it clears up images better than existing software.
Co-principal investigator and NTHU physics Professor Goto Tomotsugu (後藤友嗣) said extragalactic background lighting is the result of radiation gathered since the birth of the cosmos. VERTECS's precision will help humans visually trace the universe's evolution.
National Cheng Kung University Professor Lin Chien-hung (林建宏) said low-Earth orbit satellites travel at about seven kilometers per second, which blurs collected signals. Without VERTECS to clear up these signals, the data is useless.
The team will continue observations. They plan to collect enough data on cosmic radiation to explain excess light and, in turn, the origins of the universe, per the Economic Daily News.
