A lot of things occupy the day-to-day lives of engineers from the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA). Some engineers focus on building and launching satellites — from brainstorming on design to testing the models — while others focus on creating maps using data from existing satellites.
PhilSA engineers create different types of maps, from land cover maps to mangrove maps. But during disasters, they prioritize maps that help guide disaster response on the ground, such as flood impact maps and oil spill extent maps. Instead of wading through floodwater or collecting oil from seawater, PhilSA engineers sit behind their computer desks to generate the maps and send them to other government agencies for their own use.
In the case of heavy flooding, it takes around a day or more for engineers to process the flood maps until they get sent out. But in disaster response, time is of the essence, and lifesaving information needs to be available right away.
What could help in this endeavor is PhilSA’s flagship project, the Multispectral Unit for Land Assessment or MULA satellite, which has been in the works in the United Kingdom since 2021.
An Earth observation satellite, MULA could help create better maps and improve the slow turnaround process. With a target 2026 launch, its main mission would be to capture images of the Philippines from space. Once in orbit, it would be the biggest satellite built by the country so far.
Currently, the country depends on satellites Diwata-2 and NovaSAR-1, and a disaster-activated charter for satellite data.
PhilSA launched Earth observation satellite Diwata-2 in 2018. It’s the lone satellite from the country in orbit after previously launched Philippine satellites Diwata-1 and Maya-1 to -6 reentered Earth’s atmosphere. The Philippines also partly owns NovaSAR-1, which is currently in orbit and operated by British spacecraft engineering company Surrey Satellite Technology, Ltd. (SSTL).
The Philippines also participates in a disaster-activated charter with other countries that operate their own satellites. This means that in times of disaster, the Philippines can request data from these countries if their satellites pass over affected areas, and vice versa.
If not for the charter, obtaining satellite data would take around 7-10 days since Diwata-2 and NovaSAR-1 don’t hover over the country 24/7; it could take up to a month if the satellites took images on cloudy days.
But as part of the charter, PhilSA waits only about a day for flood maps during times of flooding and heavy rain — if the images are readily available. If not, it waits a few more days, since engineers must first instruct the satellites to capture the necessary images.
With the MULA satellite, images could be captured and downloaded near real time as the satellite passes over the country, cutting short a process that currently extends to days or even months. According to PhilSA’s satellite primer, this is one of MULA’s main features that would allow quicker response to heavily affected areas during disasters and better prioritization of rescue efforts.
To take images, PhilSA boasts of MULA’s TrueColour camera, derived from the Disaster Monitoring Constellation satellite of SSTL.
The TrueColour camera could capture 5m resolution images with a swath width of around 120 kilometers. Swath width refers to the horizontal distance that a satellite can capture. To compare, a camera on the Diwata satellites has a swath width of only around 4 kilometers.
This means that MULA’s camera could capture an image of the Philippines covering Manila Bay up to the edge of Polillo Island in Quezon province in terms of width, according to PhilSA engineer Julie Ann Banatao. A pixel of an image would cover a land area of five meters by five meters.
The TrueColour camera could also detect nine wavelengths or “colors” from visible to near infrared. This allows the camera to take images of the Philippines even on cloudy days. It also helps the satellite detect more types of materials found on Philippine lands — different types of agricultural crops for example — creating more possible patterns for maps.
PhilSA also helps generate land cover maps using satellite data in partnership with the European Commission and the Philippines’ National Mapping and Resource Information Authority. Land cover maps, which distinguish areas covered by forests, mangroves, concrete, water, and other features, can be used for environmental applications such as monitoring land use.
If everything goes according to plan, MULA will be the largest satellite launched by the Philippines so far. It is classified as a small satellite, weighing around 130 kilograms; in comparison, the Diwata satellites are microsatellites, each weighing 50 kilograms, while the Maya cube satellites are nanosatellites, each weighing 1 kilogram.
The camera would serve as MULA’s primary payload (instruments on a satellite that perform specific functions), but the satellite would carry secondary payloads as well — the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B). The AIS would be used for the detection and tracking of ships, and the ADS-B for tracking aircraft.
The secondary payloads would help in the assessment and monitoring of national security areas in the Philippines.
In the long run, PhilSA aims to train its engineers who are working on the MULA satellite project to eventually build locally. Out of the 75 PhilSA engineers, 16 are in the UK to learn how to build the satellite under the “know-how transfer” or the hands-on training and development program of SSTL.
Meanwhile, in the Philippines, PhilSA engineers coordinate with their colleagues in the UK to learn how to build small satellites. But, since engineers here don’t have actual laboratories to work at, they learn mostly about the theoretical parts.
At the same time, PhilSA takes care of establishing relationships with space-adjacent companies in the country to convince them to build components for the satellites that PhilSA wants to build in the future. It encourages universities to do space-related research as well.
With these collaborations, PhilSA hopes to build and sustain a thriving space industry in the Philippines. – Rappler.com
