The Philippines aims to become a space-capable, spacefaring nation within the next decade, according to the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA).
The agency has been concentrating on developing and operating various satellites to achieve that goal, PhilSA Director General Joel Marciano Jr. said during the Malacañang Insider program.
“In the Philippine space policy, it is written that we have a central goal of becoming a space-capable, spacefaring nation within the next decade. So, being spacefaring means you have people think of astronauts, right? But satellites are kind of a proxy for astronauts,” Marciano said.
“It could also mean you have rockets to bring things to space, but at the very least, it means you have infrastructure that you operate and control in space, like satellites – that makes us spacefaring. So, we are spacefaring by that definition already because we operate and control our own satellites going around the Earth,” he added.
Part of a sustainability plan is building industrial capabilities to eventually attain space capability, he said.
Marciano stated that PhilSA has a satellite roadmap as it tries to engage local companies, possibly through public-private partnerships (PPPs), to increase local satellite content for domestic production.
Aside from the MULA satellite, which could be launched in early 2026, there are other satellite projects currently in the PhilSA pipeline.
“We have Maya-7. Maya-7 is a CubeSat. We continue the development of these CubeSats, nano satellites from Maya-1 to Maya-6, which were supported by the DOST (Department of Science and Technology),” Marciano said.
PhilSA wants to strengthen the CubeSats program with the participation of more universities and high schools.
“Now PhilSA has taken over and this Maya-7 satellite is twice as big as the previous satellites. And what they are is that it’s a platform for demonstrating new technologies. They are being built out of the university,” Marciano said.
PhilSA is also still operating Diwata-2, which has taken many images and helped Filipino scientists gain more knowledge in satellite construction.
Marciano expressed hope to continue the project further with Diwata-3, which will carry at least nine locally-made components once launched.
PhilSA is also in the process of transitioning the NovaSAR satellite from the DOST to PhilSA. NovaSAR carries a radar that can see through clouds and is capable of nighttime imaging.
“Our country is very cloudy. Some places are stubbornly cloudy, so you have a problem with cameras taking pictures from space if it’s cloudy. But with radar, it can see through those clouds and measure what’s on the surface,” he explained.
“So, we are using that. We are interested in building more capability in this kind of satellite for our country,” Marciano added. PND
