TshepisoSAT's mission is still on track
SATELLITE: Engineer Leon Steenkamp, who is monitoring the nanosatellite’s daily movements from the ground station at the Bellville Campus, says the mission is still on track.
Friday, 22 May 2015
Approximately 18 months in space and TshepisoSAT, Africa’s first nanosatellite, is still going strong.
Developed by postgraduate students enrolled in the Satellite Systems Engineering Programme at the French South African Technology Institute (F’SATI), TshepisoSAT is the first nanosatellite to be developed on the African continent.
Engineer Leon Steenkamp, who is monitoring the nanosatellite’s daily movements from the ground station at the Bellville Campus, says the mission is going according to plan.
“The nanosatellite is still working and doing very well,” says Steenkamp.
“We are communicating with it every day and receiving photographs and telemetry (data). It has shown that it can survive in space.”
To date, TshepisoSAT survived the harsh radiation from the sun, extreme temperature fluctuations, a strong solar storm and two close encounters with defunct Russian satellites.
This nanosatellite carries a high-frequency radio beacon that will be used to study the propagation of radio waves thro ugh the ionosphere, providing valuable space weather data to the South African National Space Agency Space Science Directorate.
Steenkamp says they also recently traveled to the United States, where they presented on the progress of the nanosatellite at the 12th Annual CubeSat Developers’ Workshop.
TshepisoSAT’s journey is set to be chronicled by F’SATI Director Prof Robert Van Zyl on Monday when he presents at the Tedx TableMountain event.
Written by Candes Keating
Email: keatingc@cput.ac.za
Provides coverage for the Engineering and Applied Sciences Faculties; the Bellville and Wellington Campuses, and research and innovation news.
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