Sumbandilasat delayed again

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 13 Mar 2007

Sumbandilasat, SA's second satellite, is now set for launch between 18 and 20 June, says the Department of Science and Technology (DST).

The 80kg micro-satellite was originally set to launch from a nuclear-powered Russian submarine in the Barents Sea, near the North Pole, in the dead of the Northern winter. This was postponed to Easter and has now been further delayed into the high polar summer, believed to be the safest time to launch.

SunSpace and Information Systems built Sumbandilasat, a combination of the Venda for "lead the way", and "sat", under contract from the University of Stellenbosch for the DST. The device is still at its builders' Stellenbosch Technopark campus.

The DST's chief director: frontier programmes, Pontsho Maruping, says a decision must still be made as to when Sumbandilasat will be handed over to the DST and be shipped to a naval facility near Murmansk, in northern Russia. "I expect it will be a public event," she says.

SunSpace export manager Ron Olivier previously said Sumbandilasat will cost R11 million to build, compared to the R8 million spent on its predecessor, Sunsat (Stellenbosch University Satellite), but is thrice as good.

"[The satellite's earth observation camera] has three times better ground resolution and, instead of a gravity gradient boom, which is not very stable, we can now, with three-axis stabilisation, keep it stable enough to achieve the 6.25m ground sampling distance objectives we set ourselves."

Olivier explains this means one pixel = 6.25 sq metres. Images taken by Sumbandilasat will be downloaded by CSIR engineers at its Satellite Application Centre, at Hartebeeshoek, near Pretoria, as the satellite crosses over.

Xhead = Experiments

The satellite will also carry a number of experiments and an amateur radio payload. The CSIR will be responsible for the satellite's day-to-day operations, as well as telemetry, tracking, control and data capturing.

Olivier says Sumbandilasat was built under a R26 million contract, which includes launch and shipping costs, as well as funding used by Stellenbosch University to present post-graduate and PhD courses on satellite development.

Sunsat, or ZA-001, also built by SunSpace, was launched in February 1999 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, in California, on a Delta II rocket. It had a 23-month operating life and ceased functioning in 2001. It remains in orbit.

Once launched, SunSpace will be responsible for commissioning Sumbandilasat and for providing technical support during its planned three- to four-year lifespan.

"We expect her to last five years-plus, however," Olivier says. Commissioning entails remotely switching the satellite on and "detumbling" it, as it will be "spinning at one heck of a rate", Olivier says.