Taiwan's first satellite, ROCSAT (Republic of China Satellite) was built by TRW for Taiwan's National Space Program Office. ROCSAT carried a Ka-band experimental communications payload, an ocean color imager experiment to study plankton distribution for fisheries management, and an instrument to measure thermal plasma in the equatorial ionosphere. It was equipped with a small hydrazine orbital adjustment engine.

Total Mass: 400 kg.

Taiwan's first satellite, with experimental communications, ocean imagery, and ionospheric studies instruments. The Primex OAM placed itself and the payload into an elliptical transfer orbit. A second OAM burn circularized the orbit, and ROCSAT separated into a 588 x 601 km x 35.0 deg orbit.

• 4 - McDowell, Jonathan, Jonathan's Space Report (Internet Newsletter), Harvard University, Weekly, 1989 to Present. HTML when accessed: ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news