The launch details of the South African satellite, due to go into space in December, will be announced during Russian president Vladimir Putin's visit to SA next month, says SunSpace director Sias Mostert.
Called Sumbandila, a Venda word that loosely translates to "Pathfinder", it is the first satellite to be designed and built by SunSpace. It is SA's second satellite, after the SunSat that was designed and built by Stellenbosch University and was sent into orbit in 1999 by the US space agency NASA.
Mostert says Sumbandila has attracted considerable foreign interest, especially from various African and South East Asian countries. The R15 million needed to complete the project, however, was entirely sourced from SA, including the departments of science and technology and communications, Stellenbosch University and SunSpace.
"The business cases for satellites are numerous. However, for SA this project has other spin-offs, such as the internship of nine undergraduate engineers and that of another nine black master and doctorate graduate engineers. There is also a school outreach programme and it showcases the next generation of South African-produced space electronics that will be used to produce other satellites," he says.
Sumbandila will contain various payloads, including a high-resolution camera to be used mainly for agricultural purposes, such as crop estimations. It will conduct experiments in zero gravity, and an electronics payload will include an e-mail system for use when people have no access to a terrestrial network.
Experimental
Kgabo Mathapo, a post graduate at the University of Stellenbosch, will deliver a paper at the Utah Small Satellite Conference, held from 14 to 17 August, in the US. His paper will focus on the software defined radio (SDR) automatic identification receiver (AIS), one of the several experimental payloads on the satellite.
The Small Satellite Conference is the largest small satellite annual event in the world.
SDR is a technology that is being researched at the University of Stellenbosch because of its potential to realise reconfigurable radio systems and networks that use the same hardware for different applications. The primary purpose of the SDR AIS experimental payload on Sumbandila is to demonstrate the monitoring of marine traffic along the South African coast.
The secondary purpose is to carry out scientific experiments that will demonstrate the possibility of reconfiguring radio systems on a satellite through software updates and to serve as proof of concept of SDR for satellite communication systems.
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