South Africa launches 1st 'made in Africa' satellites under SpaceX's Transporter-3 mission

South Africa has launched its first satellite constellation developed entirely in continent of Africa, a move hailed by country's Science and Innovation Minister Ble Nzimande as a milestone. Three locally produced nanosatellites, which me up country's first Maritime Domain Awareness Satellite (MDASat) constellation, were launched from Cape Canaveral in United States on Thursday as part of American aerospace company SpaceX's Transporter-3 mission.

Transporter-3, SpaceX's third dedicated rideshare mission, carried a total of 105 spacecraft for various organisations and governments, including CubeSats, microsats, PocketQubes and orbital transfer vehicles.

Minister Nzimande said funding and support of South Africa's satellite construction industry by Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) was reaping rewards.

"This will furr cement South Africa's position as an African leer in small satellite development, and help country to capture a valuable share of a niche market in fast-growing global satellite value chain," he said.

launch of first three satellites of MDASat constellation comes three years after that of most vanced South African nanosatellite to date, ZACube-2, as a technology demonstrator for constellation.

"Since its launch in 2018, ZACube-2 has been providing cutting-edge very high frequency (VHF) data exchange communication systems to country's maritime industry, as a contribution to Operation Phakisa," Nzimande said, ding that DSI h invested 27 million rands over three years in development of MDASat constellation.

Operation Phakisa focuses on unlocking economic potential of South Africa's oceans, which department said could contribute up to R177 billion to GDP by 2033 and between 8,00,000 and a million direct jobs.

DSI is implementing this work through Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT).

Although South Africa has been involved, on a relatively small scale, in space activities since dawn of space age in 1957, national space industry requires specialised skills.

minister noted that lack of space professionals and engineers h prompted DSI and its National Research Foundation (NRF) to initiate a human capital development programme at CPUT under French South African Institute of Technology (F'SATI) cube satellite (CubeSat) programme, with introduction of a Master's in Electrical Engineering focusing on satellite systems.

"As part of this programme, students are taught engineering principles using CubeSats as training tools," Nzimande said.

"CubeSats are built using same engineering principles as any or satellite, hence highly specialised and vanced skills are acquired through this programme, he said.

full MDASat constellation will be an operational constellation of nine cube satellites that will detect, identify and monitor vessels in near real-time in support of South African maritime domain awareness. 

(Image: Twitter/@SpaceX)