South Africa’s first nanosatellite, which was designed and built by students at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) to monitor space weather, was launched on Thursday from the Yasny launch base, in Russia, attached to a RS-2OB Dnepr rocket.

The 1.2 kg cube, codenamed ZACube-1, was expected to orbit earth up to 15 times a day at an altitude of 600 km, travelling six-billion kilometres before re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere.

Funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the South African National Space Agency (Sansa), the cube satellite, which measures 10 cm by 10 cm, was about 100 times smaller than the Sputnik 1 – the first satellite to be launched into space in 1957.

The nanosatellite had been named Tshepiso, which means “a promise” in Tswana. The name was suggested by a grade 9 learner from the Bethel Junior Secondary School, in Matatiele, Eastern Cape, who participated in a national competition launched by the DST, which had called on all grade nine to 12 learners to come up with a “truly African” name for the satellite.

It took 18 months, 30 000 hours of manpower and 40 CPUT postgraduate students participating in the Satellite Systems Engineering Programme at the French South African Institute of Technology (F’SATI), in Belville, to build and complete the satellite, which contained 4 000 electronic components.

The ZACube-1 had also received its official licence from the South African Council for Space Affairs and would now be included in South Africa’s national register of space assets.

Speaking at CPUT’s Bellville campus on Thursday, Sansa CEO Dr Sandile Malinga said the satellite would enable Sansa to gather data on space weather, which was integral to understanding and monitoring solar activity during the period of solar maxima.

“This is a phenomenon that can have critical implications to the functionality of our technology and electrical power system on earth, as well as the operation of satellites,” he commented.

F’SATI programme director Professor Robert van Zyl added that the nanosatellite would provide valuable space weather data to the Sansa Space Science directorate, in Hermanus.

Seven antennae elements spread over a 100 m2 area, in Hermanus, would receive the beacon payload signals, while two 6-m-long antennae at the ground control station at CPUT’s Bellville campus would track the satellite, collect the data and issue commands.

He further noted that CPUT was in the process of developing ZACube-2, which would be three times larger than ZACube-1, and would be used for earth observation and space weather research.