OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Monday 4.15pm.
POST and Telecommunications Minister Jay Naidoo on the weekend unveiled South Africa’s first ever locally-built satellite which will be launched by Nasa in January. The micro-satellite, called Sunsat, cost about $6-million to build and was constructed by post-graduate engineering students at Stellenbosch University.
Unveiling the satellite, Naidoo said the world is on the verge of an unprecedented growth in the use of satellites and space related activities for peaceful purposes. According to the International Telecommunications Union, he said, it is estimated that more satellites will be launched in the next 10 years than all that have been launched since the launch of Sputnik, the first satellite to go into space in 1965. “South Africa also has a growing demand for satellite services, for telecommunications, broadcasting, weather prediction, agricultural information, exploration, pollution [and] monitoring,” he added.
Through the various users of satellite facilities such as Telkom, Sentech, Transtel, Orbicom and others, South Africa presently spends between $90-million and $100-million annually on leasing transponder capacity from international satellite operators. The country already has a large involvement in space affairs, and telemetry ground stations at Hartebeeshoek to support the growing US and European space programmes.
The Sunsat will be taken to the United States on 19 November and attached to the Delta2 rocket at the Western Test Range in California in the middle of December to be launched on January 8. — Pana