The Multispectral Unit for Land Assessment (MULA) is a planned Filipino

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

dedicated in Earth observation and remote sensing. Upon completion it will become the largest satellite made by Filipinos.

Development

The

Philippine Space Agency The Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) is the national space agency of the Philippines. The unified space agency is defined by the Philippine Space Act (Republic Act No. 11363) which was signed into law on August 8, 2019, by President Rodrigo Dut ...

(PhilSA) announced on June 9, 2021, that a satellite is in development that would be bigger than the ones made previously under the Philippine Scientific Earth Observation Microsatellite (PHL-Microsat) program. The satellite is named Multispectral Unit for Land Assessment (MULA). MULA would be the first of a "next-generation satellites" under the

Philippine space program The space program of the Philippines is currently maintained by the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) together with various agencies under the Department of Science and Technology (DOST). The space program includes space research and development, ...

, with the team behind the satellite building on the knowledge gained in developing the Diwata and Maya nanosatellites. The investment cost for the satellite is at least US$34 million. The satellite project is led by John Leur Labrador and is part of the Advanced Satellite and Know-how Transfer for the Philippines (ASP) of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST). The

University of the Philippines Diliman The University of the Philippines Diliman (also called UPD; ), also referred to as UP Diliman, is a State university and college (Philippines), public, coeducational, Research university, research university located in Diliman, Quezon City, Ph ...

and DOST- Advanced Science and Technology Institute, in coordination of PhilSA, are the lead entities responsible for MULA's development. It is also co-designed with British firm

Surrey Satellite Technology Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, or SSTL, is a company involved in the manufacture and operation of small satellites. A spin-off company of the University of Surrey, it is presently wholly owned by Airbus Defence and Space. The company began ...

. Filipino engineers who worked on MULA were sent to the United Kingdom for an immersion on satellite design and manufacturing process. The preliminary mission objectives of MULA was determined in early 2020.

Instruments

MULA will weigh , and will become the largest Filipino-made satellite. It is equipped with a TrueColour camera which has a capability to capture images with a resolution and a wide swatch width of . MULA will also have nine

spectral bands Spectral bands are regions of a given spectrum, having a specific range of wavelengths or frequencies. Most often, it refers to electromagnetic bands, regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. More generally, spectral bands may also be means in ...

for various environmental applications including land cove change mapping, crop monitoring, and disaster and forestry management. It will be designed to be able to take images of roughly of land area daily. It will also be equipped with

Automatic Identification System The automatic identification system (AIS) is an automatic tracking system that uses transceivers on ships and is used by vessel traffic services (VTS). When satellites are used to receive AIS signatures, the term ''Satellite-AIS'' (S-AIS) is ...

(AIS) and

Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) is an aviation surveillance technology and form of Airborne collision avoidance system#Aircraft collision avoidance, electronic conspicuity in which an aircraft determines its position via sat ...

(ADS–B) which could be used to detect and track aircraft and ships. The satellite will also have a jet propulsion system.

Launch and mission

It was originally planned that MULA would be launched to space by 2023 but this schedule has been postponed to 2025. MULA will be positioned in a sun-synchronous

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...

, and will rotate around the globe ten times daily. During the 8th Philippine Space Council (PSC) meeting held in 12 August 2024, President

Bongbong Marcos Ferdinand "Bongbong" Romualdez Marcos Jr. (, , ; born September 13, 1957), commonly referred to by the initials BBM or PBBM, is a Filipino politician who has served as the 17th president of the Philippines since 2022. He is the second child ...

announced that MULA will be launched on a

Falcon 9 Falcon 9 is a Reusable launch system#Partial reusable launch systems, partially reusable, two-stage-to-orbit, medium-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured in the United States by SpaceX. The first Falcon 9 launch was on June 4, 2010, an ...

rocket as part of

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the compa ...

''Transporter-16'' mission, scheduled sometime between October 2025 and March 2026.

References

Earth observation satellites Satellites of the Philippines Proposed satellites STAMINA4Space program 2025 in spaceflight {{Philippines-stub