LAC 5493

OUTER SPACE LAW

ARTICLE REVIEW
(DEVELOPING THE SPACE INDUSTRY OF MALAYSIA)

PREPARED FOR : DR. CHE ZUHAIDA BINTI SAARI

MOHAMAD ZULFAUZAN BIN AHMAD 1151853

 Perdana School of Science, UTM researchers Mustafa Din Subari and Azmi Hassan
straightforwardly explaining the development of the space industry in Malaysia in their article
dated on June 2016. Nowadays, the space industry in Malaysia had risen as popular fields, many
works had been done in order to making Malaysia at par with the developed country such as
United State of America and Russia.

Apparently, Malaysia has long been in the space industry. Regardless of having launched
its own satellites, Malaysia also had done a well successfully program which is Angkasawan
Program in October 2007. This program has their own achievement and progress that had
contributed towards the economy especially pertaining to the space industry that involving
Malaysia.

Even though this industry carried high potential of return, but it is also very expensive
and Malaysia need a strategic plan in order to ensure the return of investment is significant.
According to the author, the need to build the facilities is a must in order to sustain the capability
of this venture in the future.

On top of that, Malaysia had already going deep in the space. Until now, there is a
complete list of Malaysia’s involvement in space industry such as having their own satellites,
generating related human resource, operating space systems participating in regional and
international initiatives and more significantly, serving and leading the world in space.

Besides, according to this article, in order to see the achievement and the development
that had been done, in 2003, the National Space Agency of Malaysia (ANGKASA) is one of the
agency that been given the responsibility to developing the space sector in Malaysia. Prior to
that, a division named Space Science Study (BAKSA) had operating the National Planetarium.
TiungSAT-1 a micro satellite was the first satellite technology acquisition program for the
country. Malaysia also has several satellite owners and operators that are well known such as the
Malaysia East Asia Satellite (MEASAT). Among others, Malaysia also have several satellite-
based service providers such as BayComm Sdn Bhd and Celcom that are developing in their
space technologies day by day.

Other than that, Malaysia not only focusing the development only in the country, but also
making an international relations and cooperation with other countries. Malaysia have been
collaborating with many international space countries. For instance, in the earlier international
venture, the operation of space industry in Malaysia has received the transmission from the
Palapa-B which come from Indonesian our neighborhood country. This venture end up with a
successful achievement and have further their relationship with many other countries such as
Thailand, United Kingdom, South Korea and Russia.

Last but not least, this article had shown the example of space industry that we can see
through in our daily life. The most visible space industry that we can see is the satellite
communications service in Malaysia that been operated by ASTRO, which offers more than 150
TV channels. Statistic shown that 54% or 3 million of Malaysian homes or the residential had
subscribed into this TV channels provider. So, this prove stated that our space industry is
developing until now.

Conclusion, among the achievement that we can see, Malaysia involvement in the space
industry is part of the effort in order to attain the Vision 2020 objective of making Malaysia into
a fully developed country and at par with the other fully developed country in the world. Thus,
the government has to implement many plans and initiatives to making it successful in the future
especially in the future of Malaysia Space industry.