The RazakSAT mission is to ensure the availability of satellite imaging for any part of Malaysia in order to fulfill the requirements of the local remote sensing user community. Malaysia has been dependent on remote sensing satellite imagery provided by other Satellite Operating Agencies (SOAs) that have been constrained by cloud and timeliness. To alleviate those constraints, RazakSAT will be uniquely placed in a Low Earth Near Equatorial Orbit (NEqO). RazakSAT will carry the Medium-sized Aperture Camera (MAC) which is an electro-optical payload of a pushbroom type with 5 linear detectors (1 panchromatic, 4 multispectral). At a nominal altitude of 685 km and 9° inclination orbit, it will provide an optimal number of 14 passes a day over Malaysia thereby increasing its imaging opportunity by over 3 times compared to a satellite orbiting the Earth in the more popular Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO). The NEqO enables RazakSAT to provide higher imaging opportunity for Malaysia and other countries that are situated in the near equatorial belt of 9° North and South of the Equator.
RazakSAT offers a Panchromatic band (510 - 730 nm) and 4 Multispectral Bands: Band 1: Blue (450 - 520 nm); Band 2: Green (520 - 600 nm); Band 3: Red (630 - 690 nm) and Band 4: Near-Infrared (760 - 890 nm). The spatial resolution of 2.5 m and 5 m for Panchromatic and Multispectral, respectively, covers a swath width of 20 km at the 685 km nominal altitude. Data is being quantized into 8 bits of 256 brightness values to represent information.
As Malaysia is located between latitude 1° - 9° North and longitude 98° - 120° East, the image acquisition is optimum when the orbit is inclined at 9° to provide 14 passes daily over Malaysia and other countries in the near equatorial region with 1 to 4 times imaging opportunities per day. The average contact duration of about 500 seconds with 30 Mbps transmission rate enables downloading an image strip size of 11.52 Gbits for a nominal scene size of 20km by 200km.
Remote sensing applications have been widely utilized in Malaysia by various government agencies and private sector. This user community is targeted to be the immediate beneficiaries that will realize the full exploitation of the RazakSAT data for various applications in the country and the region. In the same time, other users within the near equatorial belt will also reap the benefits from this accessible high resolution satellite imagery.
The development of RazakSAT and MAC would be a benchmark for future missions to improve for higher and better performance remote sensing technology. The infrastructure establishment of a space system like RazakSAT through human capital development and facilities sets the fundamentals for ATSB to advance into the future with the motivation to contribute towards space technology and remote sensing through local and international collaborations and providing products and services locally and internationally.
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