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 … Continue reading →