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Taiwan launches space research control center

ROC President Ma Ying-jeou attends the AMS monitoring center opeing July 3 in northern Taiwan’s Taoyuan County. (CNA)

• Publication Date：07/04/2012
• Source： Taiwan Today

ROC President Ma Ying-jeou presided July 3 over the launching of an international space research control center in northern Taiwan.

“Taiwan, with seven leading research organizations involved in the project, ranks among the top eight participating countries in terms of the scale of its contribution to this international collaborative effort,” Ma said.

The payload operations control center will monitor data from an advanced particle physics detector known as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-02, installed on the International Space Station to detect charged particles in cosmic rays so as to find dark matter and antimatter related to the formation of the universe.

AMS-02 has been transmitting data back to Earth since May 2011, when it was transported to the space station by the U.S. space shuttle Endeavor.

Hundreds of scientists from dozens of research organizations in 16 countries have participated in the project, headed by Nobel laureate Samuel Chao-chung Ting, who is also an academician at Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s top research institute.

The control center, the program’s second such facility, is located at the Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology’s Longyuan Research Park in Longtan, Taoyuan County. It will support the headquarters at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. The CSIST was responsible for heading the development of the detector’s electronics systems.

According to Ma, involvement in the project will provide a foundation for progress in applied sciences in Taiwan over the next 20 to 30 years, helping to spawn the next generation of R&D talent in the country.

William H. Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Human Exploration and Operations Directorate, said at the ceremony, “The AMS would not have existed without the support of Taiwan.” The country “should be very proud” of its monumental achievement, he added. (SB-THN)