Taiwan National Space Center’s FW5 captured the picture of the Evergreen Marine container ship “Chang Chi” running aground in the Suez Canal from space. (National Space Center, Taiwan)
Taiwan Evergreen Marine Corp.’s container ship Ever Given ran aground in the Suez Canal on March 23, causing a two-way blockage in the canal and a large number of ships waiting to pass. This rare ship jamming event was dubbed by netizens as “the big row of long glory”. The National Space Center of Taiwan also took advantage of this topic and provided satellite pictures taken by Formosa Satellite No. 5 (FH5 for short) to let the public see the blockage situation and to get to know the satellite better.
This ship jamming incident has a great impact on global shipping and trade, so it has received the attention of the international community. In addition to the Egyptian Suez Canal Authority and the rescue company assigned to try to get the “Changci ship” out of trouble, other countries, including the United States, have also expressed their willingness to provide assistance. Among them, the U.S. Navy stationed in the Middle East region has sent a small team to the scene to assist.
Thanks to the efforts of all parties, the Suez Canal Authority announced on March 27 that the rudder and propulsion of the vessel had been restored to operation. Subsequently, a picture of the ship moving 17 meters and the tugboats on the scene sounding their horns in celebration was circulated on the Internet. (Click here to see the footage)
Taiwan’s National Space Center posted on Facebook on March 27, saying, “Taiwan’s Fuwei 5 is also here to support the satellite map.” Three high-resolution satellite images were also posted.
The “Changci ship” ran aground in the Suez Canal. (Taiwan National Space Center)
The center noted that the Fowler 5 was orbiting 720 kilometers above the ground. These images were taken by the satellite at 16:49 p.m. Taiwan Time on March 25. The picture shows the stranded “Changci ship” and the ships forced to wait in Suez Bay at the southern end of the canal.
These are the ships that were forced to wait in the Gulf of Suez. (National Space Center, Taiwan)
The center explained that “resolution” is the performance index of optical telemetry satellites, which can be defined by four aspects of satellite performance: space, time, spectrum, and radiation.
Usually, people often hear that “Fuwei-5 can take images of two meters in black and white and four meters in color” refers to the “spatial resolution”, meaning that one pixel corresponds to an area of 2×2 meters or 4×4 meters on the ground. The smaller the number, the better the resolution and the finer the spatial information that can be presented.
There are also temporal resolution (revisit frequency, that is, how often to fly over the same target), radiation resolution (how many gray scale can be presented to identify the intensity of radiation), spectral resolution (the satellite can detect the spectral range and the number of bands, the higher the resolution, the more able to identify different features).
The center finally said that as for how to develop the satellite specifications for each resolution, it is related to the purpose of the mission.
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