Qualla: LAPAN: Indonesia's Space Agency https://qualla.com/national-institute-of-aeronautics-and-space en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:27 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: LAPAN: Indonesia's Space Agency https://qualla.com/national-institute-of-aeronautics-and-space LAPAN: Indonesia's Space Agency: Introduction https://qualla.com/national-institute-of-aeronautics-and-space/ On 22 September 1962, two rockets called Kartika I -- "Star" in Indonesian -- streaked off a launchpad built with Japanese engineering help on a beach in Garut, West Java. They were small, experimental, almost quaint by superpower standards. But for a country that had gained independence barely seventeen years earlier, they carried an outsized message: Indonesia intended to go to space. A year later, President Sukarno signed Presidential Decree 236, creating the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space -- known by its Indonesian acronym LAPAN -- and setting in motion six decades of rocketry, satellite development, and the kind of ambitious spaceport plans that only a country straddling the equator could credibly make.

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]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/q/s/s/national-institute-of-aeronautics-and-space-wp/qqss-lapan-indonesias-space-agency-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full LAPAN: Indonesia's Space Agency: Satellites on a Shoestring https://qualla.com/national-institute-of-aeronautics-and-space/ LAPAN's satellite ambitions took shape in two distinct phases. The first came in the 1970s, when Indonesia's government-owned telecom company Perumtel launched the Palapa series -- communications satellites built by Hughes in the United States and launched on Delta rockets and la...

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]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/q/s/s/national-institute-of-aeronautics-and-space-wp/qqss-lapan-indonesias-space-agency-satellites-on-a-shoestring.mp3 0:06 2 full LAPAN: Indonesia's Space Agency: Rockets From the Beach https://qualla.com/national-institute-of-aeronautics-and-space/ LAPAN's rocket launch station sits on Pameungpeuk Beach in Garut Regency, West Java -- the same stretch of coast where those first Kartika rockets flew in 1962. The facility was designed by Hideo Itokawa, the father of Japanese rocketry, and built through cooperation between the ...

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]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/q/s/s/national-institute-of-aeronautics-and-space-wp/qqss-lapan-indonesias-space-agency-rockets-from-the-beach.mp3 0:06 3 full LAPAN: Indonesia's Space Agency: Equatorial Ambitions https://qualla.com/national-institute-of-aeronautics-and-space/ Indonesia's geography gives it one advantage that no amount of engineering can replicate: the equator runs directly through the archipelago. A rocket launched from the equator gets a free boost from the Earth's rotational velocity -- roughly 1,670 kilometres per hour -- making he...

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]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/q/s/s/national-institute-of-aeronautics-and-space-wp/qqss-lapan-indonesias-space-agency-equatorial-ambitions.mp3 0:06 4 full LAPAN: Indonesia's Space Agency: Eyes Across the Archipelago https://qualla.com/national-institute-of-aeronautics-and-space/ Beyond rockets and satellites, LAPAN built a network of ground installations spanning the Indonesian archipelago. A remote-sensing satellite station in Parepare, South Sulawesi, received data from Landsat, SPOT, and other Earth observation platforms. Weather satellite stations in...

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]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/q/s/s/national-institute-of-aeronautics-and-space-wp/qqss-lapan-indonesias-space-agency-eyes-across-the-archipelago.mp3 0:06 5 full LAPAN: Indonesia's Space Agency: Absorbed Into the Machine https://qualla.com/national-institute-of-aeronautics-and-space/ On 1 September 2021, LAPAN ceased to exist as an independent agency. Presidential Decree No. 33/2021 folded it, along with Indonesia's nuclear energy agency, its technology assessment body, and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, into the newly formed National Research and Inno...

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]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/q/s/s/national-institute-of-aeronautics-and-space-wp/qqss-lapan-indonesias-space-agency-absorbed-into-the-machine.mp3 0:06 6 full