The end of Sumbandilasat
As South Africans, many of us don’t even know that we have a space program, so we’re especially proud of our locally built satellites. The most recent was Sumbandilasat, an Earth Observation micro-satellite operated jointly by the CSIR, the University of Stellenbosch and SunSat (A local company which designs and builds satellites).Sumbandilasat was launched in September 2009, on a Soyuz-2 launch vehicle from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, and was built to a budget using off-the-shelf components wherever possible. Although this approach allowed costs to be kept extremely low (for a satellite of its class…), it left the satellite with insufficient radiation hardening, with the consequences becoming apparent shortly after launch. A solar flare damaged the power distribution network, crippling two of the attitude control wheels and leaving the satellite in an uncorrectable tumble. Despite this, operators were able to synchronise the ground-facing cameras to succesfully return high-resolution images of the Earth. Even considering the fragility of the satellite, SunSat declared the mission a success since, after all, it was only ever designed as a technology demonstrator. According to SunSpace engineer Niki Steenkamp, the satellite has been an enormous success and has survived far longer than anticipated. Priceless information and experience has been gained through the satellite, experience that can only comes from actually building and launching a satellite.