“OUR vision is for the Philippines to have a spaceport that serves as a gateway for safe, responsible, and sustainable space access for the region and the world,” Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) Director General Gay Jane Perez said in an interview with The Manila Times as she described the technical work now underway and the long-term plan to position the country as a contributor to the regional space economy.
The spaceport is but one of many realizable plans that will move the Philippines from being a mere consumer of satellite services to becoming a builder of space capability, following the approval of a set of programs by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. during the 9th Philippine Space Council meeting earlier this month.
Earth observation satellites
Starting with the Multispectral Unit for Land Assessment (MULA), the country’s first operational class Earth observation satellite, which the PhilSA head described as now in environmental qualification testing in the United Kingdom. This stage is critical because it determines whether the spacecraft can survive the mechanical and thermal stresses of launch and orbit. The satellite is undergoing vibration tests, thermal vacuum tests and thermal cycling, each designed to replicate the conditions it will face from liftoff to its operational orbit.
“These tests verify that the satellite can survive launch and operate reliably in orbit over its mission lifetime,” she said. Any anomaly found during testing must be corrected and validated, a process that can shift schedules but is standard in satellite development. MULA is set to fly aboard SpaceX’s Transporter 20 rideshare mission in 2027.
The Council also approved the development of a future MULA network. Perez said this is not simply an expansion but a technical necessity for a country where cloud cover routinely obscures satellite imagery.
“A constellation of multiple satellites, with their orbital positions phased to cover the country at different times, allows it to revisit any given area more frequently than a single satellite can,” she explained. Higher revisit frequency increases the chances of capturing cloud free images during typhoons, crop growth cycles or environmental events. It also reduces dependence on foreign commercial imagery, strengthening national data sovereignty.
Agriculture and fighting corruption
Agriculture will benefit early. MULA’s projected five meter spatial resolution is designed for the Philippines’ fragmented farm structure, where field parcels are far smaller than those in countries typically served by global datasets. Perez said the satellite “fills a need for higher resolution images better suited to the smaller agricultural landholdings in the country,” while also supporting maritime monitoring, disaster risk reduction, environmental protection and national security.
Harmonizing satellite data requirements across government agencies can improve transparency in infrastructure planning and monitoring to fight corruption, say from flood control projects. Perez said satellite imagery “provides an objective, hard to manipulate record of what is physically happening on the ground,” making it harder for conflicting reports to obscure reality and easier to detect nonexistent or substandard “ghost” projects. A unified data standard would also streamline procurement and reduce duplicated purchases of satellite imagery.
Another major program endorsed by the Council is the development of a sovereign geostationary telecommunications satellite. The project is rooted in a simple but persistent vulnerability: when typhoons or earthquakes strike, terrestrial networks fail. Cell towers collapse, fiber lines snap, and power systems go down. Perez said this is precisely the gap the project aims to close.
“This is the resilience gap that the project is built to close,” she said. A government operated satellite would allow authorities to reserve bandwidth for emergency use and shift capacity to affected regions as needed. “The satellite has technology that allows us to shift the capacity in real time so that in the critical window between the occurrence of the disaster and the recovery of terrestrial networks, the affected area can have assured connectivity under the government’s control,” she added.
The project is intended to stimulate local industry. Philippine companies can participate in building gateway stations, operations centers and user terminals, while new entrants can use the construction phase to build capability ahead of operations. Perez said, “The goal is not only to launch the satellite but to build a stronger space industry around it.” The initiative includes training Filipino engineers in satellite testing and operations, helping build a technical workforce for the emerging sector.
Soon: A Philippine spaceport
PhilSA is also preparing for the country’s first liquid-fueled rocket launch from Lal lo Airport in Cagayan next year. The program involves propulsion engineering, systems integration and regulatory coordination. Perez outlined the milestones: completion of rocket development training in the Republic of Korea, importation of the assembled rocket and auxiliary equipment, demonstration of a local propellant supply chain, establishment of the launch site, systems testing, the launch itself and post flight analysis. She noted that risks include how well the rocket tolerates transport from Korea, the challenges of testing and setting up the launch, and the fact that this will be the first trial of locally sourced propellant components.
All these efforts feed into a long-term vision to establish a Philippine spaceport capable of supporting commercial launches. Perez said the goal is to create “a spaceport that serves as a gateway for safe, responsible, and sustainable space access for the region and the world.” She emphasized that launch providers evaluate not only geographic latitude and downrange safety corridors but also regulatory predictability. “Apart from location, launch companies also take into consideration the approval process — whether it is clear, whether the approvals arrive on a schedule they can plan around, and whether the country meets its international obligations,” she said. Reliability, she added, is where the Philippines intends to compete.
PhilSA is expanding its orbital debris protocols as well. Perez described the agency’s advisory process when foreign launches have drop zones that may affect Philippine areas of interest. PhilSA prepares an executive brief for the Office of the President, coordinates with a multiagency technical working group and issues advisories to coastal communities and maritime stakeholders. The Philippines follows notification practices aligned with the UN Rescue Agreement, informing the launching state and the UN Secretary General when debris is positively identified.
Perez said the Philippine space industry is “gaining traction in its emerging stage and is well positioned to advance toward greater maturity within the next decade.” PhilSA’s strategy spans governance and regulation, investment promotion, infrastructure development, capacity building and international partnerships. The country is pursuing collaborations with Argentina, Brazil, the European Union and ESA, India, Japan, Poland, the UAE and NASA, while strengthening its role in Asean as a “norm entrepreneur” advancing regional initiatives on space situational awareness and space traffic management.
