The country’s space imaging capabilities took center stage in the latest edition of the Philippine Space Watch.
Snapshots of different sights all over the world taken by Diwata-2, the Philippines’ second microsatellite, were showcased, the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) said.
Diwata-2 captured ice formations in Vladivostok, Russia using its High Precision Telescope (HPT) in January, which is the height of winter in the city when temperatures can drop to as low as -13 degrees Celsius.
The earth observation satellite’s HPT also captured of the snow-capped mountains located in Bayanzürkh in Ulaanbaatar, PhilSA said.
Moreover, the Diwata-2 used its HPT to capture the “mosaic-like” view of Japan’s Osaka port, one of Asia’s major trade ports.
“Diwata-2 was also able to take images of interesting agricultural formations in the USA, that at first glance may seem to be reminiscent of crop circles with rumored extraterrestrial origins,” the agency said.
“These circle fields that were taken by Diwata-2’s HPT, however, are man-made irrigated crops in Indianola and Alliance in the state of Nebraska,” it added.
The operation of the Diwata-2 is handled by the engineers and scientists of Space Technology & Applications Mastery, Innovation and Advancement (STAMINA4Space), as well as the processing of the captured images.
Following its launch in 2018, Diwata-2 has captured 72,308 images all over the world, and has covered 85.13 percent of the Philippine’s land area, according to the STAMINA4Space.
The Philippine Earth Data Resource Observation (PEDRO) Center of the Department of Science and Technology-Advanced Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI) downloads images from Diwata-2 for further image processing, PhilSA said.
“Aside from images from Philippine satellites, PEDRO also receives data from other commercial satellite subscriptions, such as NovaSAR-1,” it said.
“The Philippines owns a share of the satellite’s data tasking and acquisition through an agreement between the DOST-ASTI and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL),” it added.
The space agency also shared Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images of the Taal Volcano in Batangas and Mayon Volcano in Albay, two of the country’s active volcanoes, taken by the NovaSAR-1 satellite were also featured.
Launched in August, the Philippine Satellite Watch aims to showcase satellite images of the Philippines presented by the STAMINA4Space, DOST-ASTI, and PhilSA.
“This was created to feature our various land and water resources, and our homegrown space imaging capabilities and earth observation techniques,” PhilSA said.