wiredInUSA January 2019

Space monitoring fibers

Contract brings cable milestone

Image: UPM

Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) has sent optic fiber samples to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) for testing on the International Space Station (ISS). The optic fibers, which took a year and a half to produce, are known as E-SOFPADS and I-SOFPADS (smart optical fibers for passive dosimetry in space), and will detect harmful space radiation outside and inside the ISS. The samples will be sent from Jaxa to ISS in February 2019. The E-SOFPADS will be in space for 360 days, while the I-SOFPADS will detect radiation within the ISS for 300 days, said Dr Noramaliza; they will then be returned to UPM for analysis. Three UPM researchers were involved in the building of the samples, in collaboration withUniversiti Malaya, MultimediaUniversity, Sunway University and Malaysia’s National Space Agency (Angkasa). Dr Noramaliza said the dosimeter of optical fibers will be exposed in space under various conditions and will be stored in the Kibo module, a Japanese science module developed by Jaxa for ISS.

Hengtong has manufactured and supplied 3,000km of subsea cable to Chile, as part of the Fibre Optic Austral (FOA) cable project. Including this latest contract, Hengtong has now supplied over 10,000km of subsea cable for overseas projects. The FOA subsea cable system will run along the coast of Chile, connecting Puerto Montt with Puerto Williams, with two branches to Tortel and Punta Arenas. Chile’s Comunicación y Telefonía Rural awarded the contract to build the cable to Huawei Marine. Huawei Marine said it will provide an end-to- end submarine cable solution using its 100G universal platform to provide a seamless optical network architecture between submarine and terrestrial networks. The system has a design capacity of 16Tbps and a length of 2,800km. It is scheduled for completion by the end of 2019. On 26 th November 2018 Hengtong released a number of new products, including submarine equipment fitting stations, a stereo intelligent anchor observation system, andaport andwharf environmental monitoring system. Hengtong submarine cable for Chile shipped at Heng- tong’s Pier 1

wiredInUSA - January 2019

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