Taiwan is joining democracies across the globe in accelerating its space capabilities, bolstered by a history of NASA cooperation and new moves to strengthen the island’s relationship with the United States in the domain.
Taiwan has long been a U.S. partner in space, contributing to experiments on the International Space Station and moon science programs. U.S. rockets have placed a series of Taiwanese-made satellites in space.
One focus of the island’s space efforts today is the Formosat-8 program — eight optical, remote-sensing satellites developed by the Taiwan Space Agency to provide images of the Taiwan region up to three times a day. The first of them, FS-8A, launched in November 2025 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The rest are scheduled for deployment through 2031.
“The FS-8A launch signals a major leap toward Taiwan’s sovereign space capabilities and represents a critical step in hardening its national infrastructure,” said the Formosan Association of Public Affairs, a nonprofit Taiwan advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. “A stronger and resilient Taiwan acts as a critical asset for regional security.”
Taiwan is fielding the new constellation as the U.S. Congress takes up a measure to enhance U.S.-Taiwan cooperation in space and boost U.S. support for Taiwan’s work there. U.S. agencies have limited ability under the nation’s “One China” policy to work with TASA. The Taiwan and American Space Assistance Act would allow cooperation in certain areas between Taiwan and both NASA and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
These areas include satellites, space exploration, and atmospheric and weather programs. Reorganizing space pursuits to create TASA in 2022 marked a new era for Taiwan, coupled with the announcement that the island would spend $25.1 billion over the next decade to grow its commercial space capabilities, sponsors of the congressional measure have said.
The act would create “a vital partnership for the U.S. and NASA in the Indo-Pacific and allow Taiwan to gain essential knowledge and expertise from NASA to further its space capabilities,” the sponsors said.
Greater cooperation in space between Taiwan and the U.S. can also help strengthen the island’s defenses by intertwining it with global space supply chains and norms, according to an October 2025 report by Taiwan Current News (TCN), an independent English language news site. What’s more, partnerships with U.S. commercial space interests can enable Taiwan to field capabilities quicker and develop its domestic space know-how, the TCN report said.
Deploying Formosat-8 gives Taiwan its own Earth-imaging capability so it will no longer have to wait in line to track potentially concerning activities by other nations, TASA has told reporters. Taiwan’s leaders have described the mission of Formosat-8 in dual-use terms, encompassing both civilian and military missions.
The satellites will provide imagery for disaster prevention, land monitoring, mapping, precision agriculture and national security. With resolution of a meter or less in detail, they are especially sensitive to chlorophyll content, enabling them to detect plant stress and health. They also will conduct scientific studies focused on atmospheric electricity, ionospheric physics and high-energy physics.
Advancing Taiwan’s space capabilities would help the U.S. and its allies, too, because Taiwan is in the first island chain — the string of major archipelagos off the mainland coast of China that includes the Japanese archipelago and the northern Philippines, said Lin Ying-you, an associate professor at Tamkang University in Taipei who studies military affairs.
“The information we obtain is very different from that of the United States,” Lin told the nonprofit Taiwanese media organization The Reporter. “It should be complementary rather than competitive; they help us look after other areas, and we provide them with analytical information about the near seas.”
More satellites in low Earth orbit will strengthen Taiwan’s defense, the nonpartisan Atlantic Council think tank said in a 2024 report on how the island can resist CCP aggression. One of four key recommendations in the report is strengthening satellite communications (SATCOM) to back up secure government connections at a time when the nation’s underwater internet cables are seen as vulnerable to attack. Taiwan has announced a significant investment in SATCOM.
TASA has discussed other international partnerships, too, including expansion of a bilateral agreement with the Czech Ministry of Transport, TCN reported. The ministry operates the Czech Space Portal, and the Czech Republic is a member of the European Space Agency.
At the same time, Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan’s leading mobile phone and broadband company, is striking deals with satellite companies around the world to provide back-up telecommunications in case of a war or natural disaster, the Taipei Times news organization reported in September 2025.
One example: a multimillion-dollar deal with France-based Eutelsat, the world’s second-largest operator of low Earth orbit satellites. Taiwan has also partnered with U.S.-based Astranis and SES of Luxembourg, and is in talks with U.S.-based Amazon Leo and Canada’s Telesat.
“We’re developing our own technology, but it takes a while,” Taiwan Space Agency Director-General Wu Jong-shinn told the Times. “But we can leverage the commercial resources to get us to have this communication resilience.”