Human resource programs for space technology and application in Vietnam

Vietnam's geographic location and climatic conditions (largely a tropical country) renders its sensitive to many deadly natural disasters such as flood, forest fire, typhoon, tsunami, which cause destruction of life and property, and affect millions of people every year. Moreover, as part of vulnerable" Southeast Asia, Vietnam is recently facing threats of sea level rise, ocean warming, and more severe storms and floods owing to global warming and climate change [1]. As a result, this raises an inevitable need for an effective tool to monitor, forecast, and assess the impacts of and vulnerability to disaster and climate change in Vietnam. Earth observation satellites are commonly used to assist environmental monitoring, scientific research and a number of management and production domains by providing essential information on ocean, land environments, and the atmosphere. "The Strategy for Research and Application of Space Technology towards 2020" of the Government of Vietnam has been serving as the guiding light for space technology development that help us monitor and protect our environment, manage our resources and ensure the safety and security of Vietnamese people. Based on this strategy, Vietnam-made satellite technology development is a key roadmap, especially for earth observation satellite development in order to collect images as soon as possible when urgently required to minimize the damages from disaster and climate change. For above reason, the Vietnam National Satellite Center (VNSC) was established in 2011 in order to build up capacity in terms of critical infrastructure and human resource, aiming at designing and manufacturing satellites domestically by 2020. VNSC's mission is to manage activities and programs that support and promote the development and use of satellite technology and applications. Accordingly, a roadmap for satellite manufacturing operations has also been drawn up for progress measurement and reporting. To achieve these goals, it is necessary to recruit more than 350 scientists, researchers and engineers working full time at VNSC in 2020. However, since space technology is still a new research field and several projects of big satellites have just been established for a decade in Vietnam, there is a significant shortage of high-quality human resources capable of handling these projects. Hence, the process of recruiting and training new advanced engineers is crucial to VNSC's success in the future, and takes quite a long time. To tackle this issue, some human resource training programs have recently been proposed. Within the framework of the Vietnam Space Center project, VNSC has been sending engineers to five Japanese universities to pursue master's program of space technology, to attend advanced courses for satellite makers and to study about applications of space technology in the short term. In addition, we have also recently been engaged to train aerospace engineers in Vietnam. Particularly, VNSC has cooperated with the Vietnam National University since 2010, the University of Science and Technology of Hanoi since 2012 and the Ho Chi Minh City International University since 2015, for undergraduate and graduate education in space technology and applications. In the near future, an education center for space technology and application human resource is planned to establish by VNSC. These educational collaborations and activities are expected to serve as the motivation and catalyst for satellite technology and application development in Vietnam."