CPUT’s African Space Innovation Centre (ASIC) team, who recently launched the continent’s first satellite constellation, the Marine Domain Awareness Satellites (MDASat), aboard US aerospace company SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, has achieved the first milestone with the three satellites, which is to communicate with them and receive the beacon from each satellite.

Acting Chief Engineer on the project, Nyameko Royi, says: “At 22:55 hours after the launch, we managed to receive the beacon from all three satellites and verified their status with correct battery voltage, the status of the On-Board Computer Image and deployment of the UHF antennae. We managed to also send telecoms to the satellites and successfully received the telemetry.”

Royi adds that the team has not experienced any serious challenge as yet, “although we did have Satellite A booting into fail safe mode, that was sorted immediately by requesting the OBC to reset, and within the following pass, the issue was resolved”.

He says the team is currently commissioning the Altitude Determination Control System, which provides total control of the satellite's orbit such that they are nadir pointing, which will take about two weeks.  “The passes will be 12 if we include ZACube-2 with four satellites, which are estimated useable passes. We have 24 passes, but some won’t be useable with very low elevation.”  Reflecting on the progress made since the launch, Royi says: “We are all excited about the project, and we are hopeful that we will not experience any major concerns from the satellites.”

Royi also states that the Department of Science and Innovation sanctions the mission to observe the Maritime Domain Awareness feed into Operation Phakisa by submitting the captured data to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s Oceans and Coasts Information System  Integrated Vessel Tracking project.

The team has not yet commissioned the data link. “About ZACube-2, we have six passes a day. We have three in the morning and another three in the evening,” Royi elaborates.

In addition, Royi says: “I would like to thank everyone who has been involved in the project, current CPUT employees and former colleagues. I want to extend this appreciation to other companies that support our mission and are directly or indirectly involved with it. As a team, we would like to thank the CPUT management for their support of the programme from the VC, DVC, Dean and HOD down to trainee lab technicians who provided invaluable time and support for all our programmes and missions.”

Written by Aphiwe Boyce

CPUT Vice-Chancellor Prof Chris Nhlapo congratulated engineers from the university’s African Space Innovation Centre (ASIC) in person when the continent’s first satellite constellation was successfully launched.

The Marine Domain Awareness Satellites (MDASat) have already started successfully transmitting data after they were launched aboard US aerospace company SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket.

The mission carried 105 spacecraft, including CubeSats, microsats, PocketQubes and orbital transfer vehicles.

On Thursday, the VC and members of his management team joined the ASIC team at the laboratories where the nanosatellites were built in Bellville and watched the launch live with them. The group excitedly tracked the lift-off and then watched the MDASat being deployed about 45 minutes later.

Speaking to members of the media afterwards Prof Nhlapo said it was mission accomplished- for now.

“This was the biggest satellite project to date. Many other projects are in the pipeline, so it is a big niche area. So I say watch this ‘space’,” he said.

“We are a university of technology, and we must dominate in the applied science space; our research must benefit the people of SA. That is why we want to encourage more undergraduate and post-graduate study in this growing field so that the country can keep developing its capacity.”

Acting Chief Engineer on the project, Nyameko Royi, says each satellite will initially make an average of four passes per day, which will steadily increase.

“As satellites eventually drift further apart, we’ll have breaks between overpasses, and as they eventually spread further apart, we will have an average of 12 passes per day. We are also still tracking previously launched nanosatellite ZACUBE-2, which makes it 16 tracking operations per day. We expect an average of 1883k bytes of data to be generated per pass per satellite,” he says.

This data will be used to secure South Africa’s ocean resources, amongst other things.

Written by Lauren Kansley

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