Story Highlights
Africa will launch its first private satellite into space
It has been built by schoolgirls.
CNN
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They may be teenagers, but Brittany Bull, 17, and Sesam Mngqengqiswa, 16, have big ambitions: to launch Africa’s first private satellite into space in 2019.
They are part of a team of high school girls from Cape Town, South Africa, who designed and built payloads for a satellite that will orbit the Earth’s poles scanning the surface of Africa.
Once in space, the satellite will collect information on agriculture and food security on the continent.
Using the transmitted data, “we can try to determine and predict the problems that Africa will face in the future,” explains Bull, a student at Pelican Park High School.
“Where our food grows, where we can plant more trees and vegetation, and also how we can monitor remote areas,” she says. “We have a lot of wildfires and floods, but we don’t always get out on time.”
The information received twice a day will go towards disaster prevention.
It is part of a project of the South African Meta Economic Development Organization (MEDO) working with Morehead State University in the US.
Africa’s journey into space
The girls (14 in total) are being trained by satellite engineers from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, in a bid to encourage more African women into STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics).
If the launch is successful, MEDO will become the first private company in Africa to build a satellite and put it into orbit.
“We hope to receive a good signal, which will allow us to receive reliable data,” enthuses Mngqengqiswa from Philippi High School. “In South Africa we have experienced some of the worst floods and droughts and it has really hit farmers hard.”
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Drought and the environmental effects of climate change have continued to plague the country in recent years. An El Niño-induced drought caused a deficit of 9.3 million tons in April 2016 maize production in southern Africa, according to a UN report.
“It has caused our economy to fall… This is one way of looking at how we can boost our economy,” says the young Mngqengqiswa.
Initial tests involved the girls programming and launching small CricketSat satellites using high-altitude weather balloons, before eventually helping to set up the satellites’ payloads.
Small-format satellites are low-cost ways to quickly collect data about the planet. So far, tests have involved collecting thermal imaging data that is then interpreted for early detection of floods or droughts.
“It’s a new field for us. [in Africa] but I think that with it we could make positive changes in our economy,” says Mngqengqiswa.
Ultimately, the project is expected to include girls from Namibia, Malawi, Kenya and Rwanda.
Mngqengqiswa comes from a single-parent household. Her mother is a domestic worker. By becoming a space engineer or astronaut, the teen hopes to make her mother proud.
“Discovering space and seeing the Earth’s atmosphere is not something that many black Africans have been able to do or don’t have the opportunity to look at,” says Mngqengqiswa.
The schoolgirl is right; In half a century of space travel, no black African has traveled to outer space. “I want to see these things for myself,” Mngqengqiswa says, “I want to be able to experience these things.”
Her teammate Bull agrees: “I want to show my teammates that we don’t need to sit around or limit ourselves. Any career is possible, even aerospace.”
