“Great to see DIWATA-1, the first Filipino microsatellite, launched today from the International Space Station to observe Earth and climate change,” said 47th Expedition to the International Space Station Flight Engineer 1 Tim Peake after the deployment of Diwata-1 evening of April 27. Peake uploaded a photo of Diwata-1’s deployment.
Meanwhile, Japan-based team working on Diwata-1 confirmed that they made first contact with the microsatellite April 28, 7:33 am Japan time. Japan is 1 hour ahead of Philippines.
“DOST Undersecretary Amelia P. Guevara, who witnessed the deployment of Diwata-1 at JAXA, Tsukuba, Japan sent this message early today to DOST. The very first communication contact was successful with Diwata-1 at 733am today, April 28, 2016, Japan time. We are now communicating with Diwata, communication module is working! Hurray!” Pinoy Science said.
Diwata-1 will be providing photos and images of Philippines that could be used to assess extent of damage during disasters, monitor bodies of water and vegetation, and observe large-scale weather patterns.
The main payload of Diwata-1 consists high precision telescope (HPT) for high resolution imaging, spaceborne multispectral imager (SMI) with LCTF, and wide field camera (WFC).