Taiwan Hopes To Land First Lunar Probe Later This Year

Taiwan Prepares To Send First Probe to the Moon

Transcript

00:00 This little device could soon be on the surface of the moon.

00:06 It's the Deep Space Radiation Probe, built by Taiwan's National Central University and a Japanese company.

00:12 If all goes to plan, it'll be on a Japanese rocket heading for the moon before the end of the year.

00:18 This is the first time in Taiwan that we've used a probe outside of the orbit.

00:22 In the next 10 to 20 years, the environment around the deep space and the moon will be more demanding.

00:31 We hope to build our design and production capabilities in this way.

00:37 The probe took almost two years to design, and as its name implies,

00:41 it's meant to study lunar radiation and its impact on equipment and astronauts.

00:46 Researchers will take the findings from this mission to improve future versions.

00:50 The radiation dose it's currently absorbing,

00:54 and the radiation dose it's been taking for multiple times,

00:58 will help us calculate the dose rate we need to know for our design and evaluation.

01:01 That is, how much radiation dose each unit will absorb in this area.

01:09 This is very important for the future design and evaluation of our mission.

01:15 The space race is heating up again, with several countries vying to launch their own lunar or space industries.

01:21 If Taiwan can make it to the moon later this year, it'll be a giant leap for its own efforts.

01:26 Andy Hsu and Eric Gao for Taiwan Plus.

01:29 [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]