TAIPEI (Taiwan News)  — Taiwanese scientists will join an international team of researchers to launch the INSPIRESat-1 satellite on February 14 in India.

This will be the first time Taiwan has participated in an international team launching a satellite from the South Asian country. India’s Space Research Organization announced that the satellite launch will take place at 5:59 a.m. local time at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota — an island on its eastern coast located in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

The launch vehicle will send an observation satellite named EOS-04 into an orbit at 529 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, according to a CNA report. The cube satellite INSPIRESat-1, which was partly developed by National Central University (NCU), will be joining India's own satellite, the INS-2TD in the atmosphere.

INSPIRESat-1 was a project undertaken by the "International Research and Teaching Satellite Project" (INSPIRE), of which the NCU team joined with researchers from the U.S., Singapore, India, and other countries. NCU mainly worked on the satellite’s micro ionospheric sounder, which Professor Chang Chi–wei (張起維) lead the development on.