Vietnamese-made NanoDragon satellite scheduled to be launched on October 1

Hanoi (VNA) – Vietnam’s NanoDragon satellite will be launch into outer space between 7:48-7:59am on October 1 (Hanoi time), according to the Vietnam National Space Centre (VNSC) under the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology.

The centre said that it received a notification from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on the launching plan on August 20.

The NanoDragon satellite, a nano-layer cubesat satellite which weighs 3,8 kilograms, was developed by the VNSC.

Japan’s Epsilon rocket is expected to launch NanoDragon from the Japanese southern prefecture of Kagoshima. NanoDragon is among nine satellites that the rocket carries. The rest are made by Japan. NanoDragon is expected to be launched into orbit at the height of about 560km.

Earlier, NanoDragon satellite was delivered to Japan on August 11 and tested at Uchinoura Space Centre in Kagoshima prefecture from August 16-17 before being officially transferred to the JAXA for launching under the second "Innovative satellite technology demonstration" programme.

The satellite is the product of a project to design, manufacture, launch and test operation of a nano-sized microsatellite under the national space science and technology programme in the 2016-2020 period.

The process of researching, designing, integrating, and testing the satellite's functions was carried out completely in Vietnam by VNSC researchers.

The satellite was developed with the purpose of demonstrating it could use micro-satellite beam technology to receive the Automatic Identification System (AIS) signal to track and monitor activities at sea.

Previously, the VNSC also successfully developed the 1-kg-microsatellite PicoDragon and the 50-kg satellite MicroDragon, which were launched into orbit in 2013 and 2019, respectively./.