The launch of South Africa’s R26-million Sumbandila microsatellite will now likely take place in late August, most probably on or around August 20. SumbandilaSat will be launched as a secondary payload on a Russian Soyuz launch vehicle, and this latest delay is reportedly because the primary payload for the launch, a Russian Meteor M weather satellite, will not be ready until then.

SumbandilaSat has been designed and built by specialist South African micro- satellite company SunSpace & Information Systems, which is based in Stellenbosch, in the Western Cape.

The microsatellite is currently still in South Africa, and SunSpace needs an export permit for the spacecraft from the South African Space Council, before it can be shipped to Russia (even though it is going to remain South African property). This permit is expected to be issued by the end of June and SumbandilaSat will probably be shipped to Russia in late July. It takes some 40 days to prepare a satellite for its flight, including its integration onto the topmost stage of its carrier rocket.

SumbandilaSat is an 81-kg earth observation micro- satellite; its name means ‘lead the way’ in the Venda language. It is based on a new satellite platform developed by SunSpace. The microsatellite’s main payload is a 6,25-m multi- spectral imager – that is, the imager has a resolution of 6,25 m × 6,25 m. This imager was also designed, developed and made by SunSpace.
SumbandilaSat was originally meant to have been launched in 2007, from a Russian Navy submarine, on a converted Shtil sub- marine-launched ballistic missile. As it involved the Russian Navy, this launch would have been under the aegis of the Russian Defence Ministry. However, the arrangement fell through, for reasons that have never been officially divulged (but see Engineering News February 8, 2008).

Thereafter, Russia’s civilian space agency, Roscosmos, stepped into the breach, offer- ing the land-based Soyuz launch. It was agreed by both sides that there was no need for a new launch contract, and the use of the Soyuz – a larger rocket than the Shtil – has not increased the cost to South Africa.

It had been hoped that the Soyuz launch would take place on March 25 this year, but this had to be postponed to early May because of the rescheduling of the Soyuz TMA-14 manned mission. (The Soyuz crew vehicle, or space capsule, should not be confused with the Soyuz launch vehicle, or rocket.) And now the unreadiness of the Meteor M has caused this further delay.

The launch, when it takes place, will be from the renowned Baikonur Cosmodrome. The Cosmodrome is the birth place of the Space Age. The first satellite in space, the first man in space, the first woman in space – all took off from Baikonur. (The Cosmodrome is located in Kazakhstan but is held and operated by Russia under a lease agreement that runs until 2050. Despite its name, it is not located near the town of Baikonur at all – the town lies 400 km to the north-east of the Cosmodrome.)

SunSpace was spun off by the University of Stellenbosch to exploit the expertise developed in the design, assembly and operation of the university’s own private initiative satellite, SunSat, which, in 1999, became the first South African satellite to reach orbit. SunSat had a mass of 64 kg and carried a fairly small multispectral imager, operating in three bands (red, blue and green) with a resolution of 15 m (that is, one pixel equating to 15 m × 15 m on the ground) at an altitude of 600 km – the first of its kind on a small satellite from any country.