Kenya's first operational satellite was launched into orbit on Saturday by a SpaceX rocket that took off from California following multiple delays.
The launch, which originally scheduled for Monday night, was postponed several times last week due to bad weather.
However on Saturday, a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket finally took off at 06h48 UT from its base in Vandenberg, California, before deploying several dozen satellites an hour later, including the Kenyan Taifa-1.
Meaning "Nation-1" in Swahili, the Taifa-1 satellite was designed and developed by a team of Kenyan researchers, and is intended to provide data for agriculture and environmental monitoring in Kenya that is much needed in the country which is currently experiencing an historic drought.
In a joint statement, Kenya's Ministry of Defence and the Kenya Space Agency (KSA) touted the launch as "an important milestone" that should boost Kenya's "budding space economy".
Taifa-1 successfully launched and deployed in orbit.@spaceX#Taifa- 1 pic.twitter.com/3TshImG9AR
— Kenya Space Agency (@SpaceAgencyKE) April 15, 2023
Predicting crop yields from space
According to Pattern Odhiambo, a KSA engineer who participated in the project, "We have direct benefits from space exploration, we are going to be able to improve our food security."
With the satellite's multispectral camera images, "we will be able to have high quality earth observation data, and this will help us predict crop yield," he explained.
Kenya sent its first nano-satellite into space in 2018.
As of 2022, more than 50 African satellites have been sent into space, according to Space in Africa, a Nigerian company that tracks African space programmes.
Egypt was the first country on the continent to send a satellite into space in 1998.
