Maurice is just waiting for the first images of his nanosatellite, MIR SAT-1. The spacecraft, which was launched on June 3, orbits the Earth in a low orbit. This is a first for the country that wants to get more funds for observation and monitoring of its territory.
From our Port-Louis correspondent,
The MIR SAT-1 was launched by Space X in Florida on June 3 and launched into orbit 10 days later by the International Space Station. Since then, he has been continuously monitored at the ground station, in the cyber city of Ebene, by two young Mauritian engineers with British training, Faraaz Shamutally and Ziyaad Soreefan.
It’s 16:10 this Friday, when CubeSat starts passing over Mauritius. Ziyaad Soreefan works to condition the spacecraft with its counterparts in Clyde Space, Scotland. If the development of CubeSata was controlled by the Mauritius Research Institute with the help of the UN Space Agency and the Japanese Space Research Agency, the production of this British company was carried out.
“The conditions before you go to the assignment are one month. After a month, if all the settings are correct, we go into mission mode, which means we take pictures and test the communication between the islands, Ziyaad Soreefan explains.
The ground station is equipped with five screens in different sizes that analyze and decode the signals picked up by antennas installed on the roof of the building, which Faraaz Shamutally shows us around. “We have three types of antennas. The UHF antenna receives data from the satellite. The VHF antenna is used to send commands to the satellite. We also have a satellite dish to receive data from other satellites ”.
The nanosatellite is in low orbit, 418 kilometers from Earth. It performs 15 rounds of Blue Planet every 24 hours. Less than a shoebox, this nanotechnology concentrate has great functionality. But Faraaz Shamutally dreams bigger for his country: “We strive to send a larger satellite to fulfill more specific missions in the future.”
Mauritius is the first small island state to acquire a nanosatellite as part of an ambitious project by the Minister of Information Technology, Communications and Innovation, Deepak Balgobin. “The goal is first to gain experience and go further. We have sent engineers to England and India for further training. We are currently working at the level of the Mauritius Innovation and Research Council, which is the research unit responsible for this project to create a space department, he says.
Meanwhile, MIR SAT-I does four 10-minute passes over Mauritius every 24 hours. Its signals can be picked up by 436,925 MHz radio amateurs.
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