On this day in space! Aug. 19, 1997: 1st Filipino Satellite Launches into Orbit

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On Aug. 19, 1997, the Philippines launched its own satellite for the first time.

On Aug. 19, 1997, the Philippines launched its own satellite for the first time. Before then, the country's only communications satellite was one that had been purchased from Indonesia after it was already in orbit.

On Aug. 19, 1997, the Philippines launched its own satellite for the first time. (Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

One year later, the Mabuhay Philippines Satellite Corporation sent their own satellite into orbit using a Chinese Long March 3B rocket. The new satellite was named Agila-2 in honor of the great Philippine eagle. To this day, it provides the most powerful satellite coverage in Asia and the Pacific. In 2009, the Philippines sold it to the Asia Broadcast Satellite company.

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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