<\/p>\n
Pretoria \u2013 The launch of Zimbabwe\u2019s first satellite, carried on a spacecraft, the Northrop Grumman (NG-18 Cygnus), has been postponed to Monday due to reports of a fire in the control room building.<\/p>\n
State-owned broadcaster the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation reported after midday that the highly publicised mission would be tried again on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe launch of the NG-18 rocket that carries Zimbabwe\u2019s ZimSat-1 has been postponed due to a fire alarm in some parts of the building. The weather and the rocket were reported to be okay,\u201d the broadcaster said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe launch will be tomorrow at 12.27pm Zimbabwean time. It will air on Nasa Television and the agency\u2019s website.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier, the Sunday Mail<\/em> newspaper reported that ZimSat-1 would start its journey into space through the spacecraft NG-18 Cygnus, which is scheduled to take off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Nasa\u2019s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island in Virginia in the US.<\/p>\n Zimbabwe and Uganda are scheduled to launch their respective first satellites, ZimSat-1 and PearlAfricaSat-1, into space. Both are 1U CubeSats that will be launched alongside the 2U CubeSat from Japan.<\/p>\n The ZimSat-1 satellite will host a multispectral camera and image classification tool, as well as a device to transmit and receive signals from amateur radio operators.<\/p>\n After being launched, the nanosatellite will reach the International Space Station, before its launch into orbit, scheduled for later this month.<\/p>\n ZimSat-1 was built by Zimbabwean engineers working in collaboration with the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is scheduled to launch it.<\/p>\n Three Zimbabwean scientists have been in Japan preparing for the launch.<\/p>\n Once launched, Zimbabwe hopes to deploy geospatial technology to manage its boundaries, calculate full mineral quantities, and help telecommunications companies improve their services.<\/p>\n Space in Africa reported that the satellite was a 1U educational and amateur radio mission CubeSat manufactured under the Kyushu Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n ZimSat-1 is supported by the Joint Global Multi-Nation Birds Satellite project, a multinational programme which helps countries build their first satellites.<\/p>\n In addition to the satellite itself, Birds supports a free app (BIRDS-NEST) with which satellite images from ZIMSAT-1 can be downloaded on to smartphones.<\/p>\n The development comes 23 years after South Africa launched the first African satellite, SunSat-1 in 1999. The 64kg microsatellite was built by staff and students at the University of Stellenbosch. The satellite was launched as a secondary payload on a US launcher.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pretoria \u2013 The launch of Zimbabwe\u2019s first satellite, carried on a spacecraft, the Northrop Grumman (NG-18 Cygnus), has been postponed to Monday due to reports of a fire in the control room building. State-owned broadcaster the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation reported after midday that the highly publicised mission would be tried again on Monday. \u201cThe launch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1245169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1245169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1245169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1245169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1245169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}