{"id":83921,"date":"2022-12-09T06:29:41","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T06:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theoutlier.co.za\/?p=83921"},"modified":"2025-11-17T17:42:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:42:19","slug":"what-is-south-africa-doing-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2022\/12\/09\/what-is-south-africa-doing-in-space\/","title":{"rendered":"What is South Africa doing in space?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2020, the government awarded the South African National Space Agency R4.47-billion <\/a>over three years for the Space Infrastructure Hub.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Space Infrastructure Hub includes the 24 hour space weather<\/a> centre opened in November in Hermanus, Western Cape. It will monitor solar storms and space weather phenomena to protect South Africa\u2019s satellites. The centre cost R107.5-million<\/a> over three years<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hub also includes the Earth Observation Data Cube facility<\/a> with archival<\/a> and current satellite footage suppling satellite photographs showing land use, pollution and natural disasters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other elements of the Space Infrastructure Hub are upgrades to the Houwteq Facility<\/a> (previously run by South Africa\u2019s aerospace and technology company Denel) and an Engineering Design Facility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government plans to use the data collected by the Space Infrastructure Hub to address its national priorities, such as economic growth<\/a> through sustainable infrastructure and poverty reduction<\/a> by monitoring crops and South Africa\u2019s oceans to ensure food security and to monitor the impact of pollution and natural disasters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Satellites<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This year, South Africa launched three satellites into orbit from Cape Canaveral<\/a>, US, in January<\/a>. The satellites, developed by Cape Peninsula University of Technology<\/a> and French South African Institute of Technology<\/a> will detect and monitor ships sailing in or near South Africa\u2019s waters.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To date, South Africa has six satellites in orbit. The remaining three which were launched in 2013, 2014 and 2018 have been used for educational purposes<\/a>, military radar observation<\/a> and to monitor wildfires<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


As of May 2022, a total of 5,465 satellites were orbiting earth \u2013 most belonging to the US, according to data from the Union of Concerned Scientists (USC) Satellite Database.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The R4.47-billion Space Infrastructure Hub will see satellites built for earth observation and science missions to supply space weather forecasts, satellite navigation and land-mapping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,446,1387],"tags":[246,247],"newsletter-post":[],"site":[],"class_list":["post-83921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","category-the-outlier","tag-south-african-national-space-agency","tag-space-infrastructure-hub"],"acf":{"big_number":null,"big_number_caption":null,"big_number_link":null,"big_number_background":null,"big_number_text_colour":null,"big_number_icon":null,"big_number_wide":null,"featured_chart":null,"flourish_chart_id":null,"flourish_sub_title":null,"flourish_chart_width":null,"is_newsletter_post":null,"post_style":null,"show_on_front":null,"link_through":null,"chart_url":null,"background_colour":null,"text_colour":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86577,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83921\/revisions\/86577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83921"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-post?post=83921"},{"taxonomy":"site","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/site?post=83921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}