As Nigeria Sat-1 Lifespan Expires

Nigeria made its debut in satellite space technology on September 27, 2003 when it launched Sat-1 aboard a Russian rocket. The launch, at Plesetsk cosmodrome was watched live on television by millions of enthusiastic Nigerians and foreigners at 10:12 a.m. The satellite, which cost 13 million US Dollars, was expected to monitor water resources, soil erosion, deforestation and disasters. It would also be used to survey oil pipelines, oil theft and smuggling activities. In specific terms, the satellite is expected to boost the current expansion in communication, agriculture, security surveillance and Government hopes to earn 200 million US Dollars annually from subscribing African nations. The extent to which the expiring Sat-1 was able to live up to this bidding is a subject for scrutiny.

Satellite technology allows for the gathering of spatial dataset, which is comprehensive, reliable and real-time.

The Federal Executive Council at its meeting of May 2001 approved the National Space Policy and Programme. The vision of the policy is to make Nigeria build indigenous competence in developing, designing and building appropriate hardware and software in space technology as an essential tool for its socio-economic development and enhancement of the quality of life of its people. Nigeria signed the contract for the building of the NigeriaSat-1 with Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) of the

United Kingdom, on the 7th of November 2000.

The 98kg Microsatellite, which was jointly designed and built by a team of engineers from SSTL and Nigeria, was launched into 686 km Sun synchronous orbit. It was designed and built for a Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) NigeriaSat-1 Configuration Launcher Selection.

The NigeriaSat-1 carries an imaging payload that provides satellites images of 32m resolution with a swath width of 600km using push broom scanning in three spectral bands (Red, Green and Near Infra Red) and 3-5days revisit and a daily revisit when in constellation with four (4) other satellites.

The spacecraft is equipped with two 0.5Gbyte Solid State Data Recorder (SSDR) for data storage during imaging and a main Receiver Frequency (RF) downlink at S band Frequencies with data rate of 8Mbps using store and forward communications. A 3.7m dish Mission Control Ground Station manned by Nigerians is installed in Abuja for the Telemetry, Telecontrol and Command of the spacecraft.

Image download from the spacecraft is processed from low-level data (bits and bytes) into full false colour images and made available to users in soft copy.

The contract for the building of the NigeriaSat-1 also included the training of 15 Nigerian Engineers/Scientist in a Know-How Technology Training (KHTT), fifteen months of intensive training in the design and building of all subsystems of the NigeriaSat-1 Spacecraft. The training would enable the engineers to design and build subsequent generations of satellites with very minimal supervision.

The DMC Consortium is a novel international partnership between, Nigeria, United Kingdom, Turkey, Algeria, China, Vietnam, and Thailand. Each of the DMC partners is to provide a spacecraft with almost the same configuration that will work in constellation.

The constellation would provide a global coverage and daily revisit with provision of real time data.

Nigeria Sat-1 lifespan expires in a few weeks and it is to this end that a team of the country’s scientist and engineers - 4 men and two women two weeks ago, jettisoned to London for training in preparation for the launch of Nigeria Sat-2 that will replace the expiring Sat-1.

Industry watchers that spoke to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek are worried about the benefits of Sat-1 that is precipitating the launch of Sat-2. While many are arguing that the preparation for the launch of Sat-2 is based on the merit of Sat-1, others are calling for holistic view of the benefit derived from Sat-1 and the extent to which it was able to meet its expectations. They cited several situations including that the satellite was expected to come to the rescue in monitoring of oil pipe line vandalization, oil theft and smuggling activities as well as deforestation and disasters. All these are still going on unabated for the five years the satellite had lasted.

More so, the absence of effective communications in time of disaster made Nigerian Communications Commission early this year to launch emergency communication centres in collaboration with disaster relief agencies and some state governments. This is one of the expectations of Nigeria Sat-1 which was not met.

If the country’s satellite they argued was effective in monitoring disaster, how could it have taken the country over five months to locate a missing plane that was eventually found by hunters in Cross River State close to the destination of the plane?

However, the country has signed a deal with British Satellite maker, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), the same company that built the first satellite, to build a second space satellite. A government official, Felix Ale, spokesman for Nigeria's Space Research and Development Agency, said the deal between Nigeria and SSTL is expected to culminate in the launch of Nigeria SAT 2 by 2008, an earth observation satellite which has a seven-year lifespan.

SAT 2 could be deployed to aid agricultural and economic planning as well as help in disaster management, he said.

He stressed the importance of investment in space technology for effective planning to deal with developmental problems. According to a statement from the space agency, Nigeria hopes to expand its uses of space technology to include contributing to the management of its agricultural, water and human resources through use of satellite mapping when the second satellite is deployed. As the country prepares to make second journey to space for the launch of Nigeria Sat-2, it is the hope of Nigerians that efforts would be made to ensure that the country enjoys the benefit for which it is been launched, which is expected to translate to better planning and effective disaster management.