NanoDragon was among nine satellites launched into orbit aboard the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Epsilon-5 launch vehicle
HANOI, December 2. /tass/. The Vietnamese satellite NanoDragon, launched on November 9 from the Uchinoura cosmodrome in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan, has not sent a signal from orbit over the past three weeks. This was stated by the Deputy Director General of the Vietnamese National Space Center (NCC) Le Xuan Hui, the newspaper "Zan chi" reported on Thursday.
NanoDragon was among nine satellites launched into orbit aboard the Epsilon-5 launch vehicle of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). According to the deputy director of the NCC, before the launch, NanoDragon passed four rounds of JAXA safety checks in compliance with the strictest standards of climatic, shock and functional tests. The satellite also underwent several rounds of examinations in Vietnam before being sent to Japan for launch.
NCC engineers continue to actively find out the reason for the absence of a satellite signal and are considering possible options for emergency situations that could occur with NanoDragon, Le Xuan Hui said.
Initially, the launch from the Uchinoura cosmodrome in Kagoshima Prefecture was supposed to take place on October 1, but it was postponed twice due to technical problems with radar equipment and weather conditions.
NanoDragon, which weighs 3.8 kg, was developed, assembled and tested by NCC specialists. It must receive and transmit signals from an automatic identification system to track the movement of ships and monitor activities at sea.
Prior to the launch of NanoDragon, Vietnam already had five of its own spacecraft in Earth orbit. In April 2008, Hanoi put into orbit the first ever own telecommunications satellite VINASat-1, built by order of the Vietnamese government in the United States. In May 2012, VINASat-2 was already launched, also created by American developers. The third satellite launched by Vietnam was the VNREDSat-1A research satellite, launched into orbit in May 2013, and in November of the same year, the Vietnamese space group increased due to the PicoDragon research satellite. In January 2019, another MicroDragon research satellite was launched into orbit to assess the quality of seawater, determine the state of marine resources and observe natural phenomena occurring along the Vietnamese seashore.
