A new nanosatellite by Nigeria will be launched before the end of May, an official disclosed to the News agency of Nigeria (NAN) in New York on Thursday.
Prof. Seidu Mohammed, Director General of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) said the launch would be in conjunction with Japan, Ghana, Bangladesh and Nepal.
Nanosatellite is applied to an artificial satellite with a wet mass between 1 and 10 kg.
“We are happy to announce the fact that the Project Manager of these five countries is a Nigerian who used this as his PhD work.
“So within the window of 23rd to 27th of May, the nanosatellite along with four other countries would be launched from the launch base in Miami, Florida.
“It once again demystifies high-tech; the fact that our engineers and scientists designed and built this, give them further confidence, that is one.
“Two, the fact that we built Nigerian Sat-X and we built this one is consolidating our know-how technology transfer already acquired by Nigerians from most of these studies embarked upon by the agency.
“And in addition to that, is a scientific work; we need to understand our environment better because of space investment already made by Nigeria and some other countries.”
According to him, Nigerian satellites are also contributing to image intelligence that is doing the analysis of problems towards solving them.
He added that the satellites were helpful to addressing some of the security challenges in the country.
“We are doing our best. We did our best in the past and we would continue to help the security agencies along this line,” he said.
