A live video from Elon Musk’s rocket firm revealed that Kenya launched its first operational earth observation satellite on Saturday on a SpaceX rocket from the United States.
Nine Kenyan engineers created the satellite, which will gather information on agriculture and the environment, including information on floods, droughts, and wildfires, which the government intends to utilize to manage disasters and fight food shortages. This report is courtesy of the American news agency, Reuters.
After three delays due to bad weather, the Taifa-1 satellite was successfully launched by a Falcon 9 rocket from the Californian Vandenberg Base at approximately 0648 GMT.
About an hour and four minutes after the rocket’s launch, SpaceX announced on its live stream that the satellite’s separation had been verified.
“We have the challenges that have been brought about by climate change, which the satellite, by virtue of being able to capture images (will be able to help monitor)”, Capt. Alloyce Were, an aeronautical engineer and deputy director of Navigation and Positioning at the government-run Kenya Space Agency, told Reuters on Friday before the satellite’s launch.
“We can monitor forest changes, we can monitor urbanization changes,” the captain added.
The satellite’s construction took two years and 50 million Kenyan shillings ($372,000) with assistance from the Bulgarian aerospace firm Endurosat, according to the space agency.
According to the organization, it will run for five years before decomposing over a 20-year period, burning out in the atmosphere. 50 payloads from other nations, including Turkey, were on the launch rocket as part of SpaceX’s ride-sharing program.
The Kenyan Ministry of Defense and the Kenya Space Agency (KSA) hailed “a major milestone” last week that might help “Kenya’s nascent space economy.”
According to Space in Africa, a Nigerian company that monitors African space initiatives, more than 50 African satellites have been launched into orbit as of 2022.
In 1998, Egypt became the first nation on the continent to launch a satellite into orbit.
