Space agency hampered by tight finances

The South African National Space Agency (Sansa) is seeking to fulfil its mission despite challenges. “All govern- ment entities are under pressure, given the state of the economy. We’re expected to do a lot more, with less,” points out Sansa corporate communications manager Vaneshree Maharaj. One of Sansa’s top projects is EOSat-1, South Africa’s next earth observation satellite being developed in conjunction with Denel Dynamics, part of the State-owned Denel group. “A lot of benefits are coming out of the satellite programme, but, unfortunately, progress on the satellite has been slow, but we are now picking up the pace.

“But we remain optimistic,” she stresses. The agency benefits from having a number of international partnerships, which help fund, or in other ways support, projects and programmes in South Africa. For example, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency provides assistance in earth observation training; the China National Space Administration provides free access to imagery from the CBERS-4 (China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite-4); and the UK Space Agency provides both data and training. “With these partnerships, we can do a lot more.” In what would be, if it happens, a very exciting development, a foreign country is considering becoming a partner in the EOSat-1 programme.

“In space, no one can do things in isolation,” she highlights. “You need to partner with countries, institutions and companies. We seize any opportunities to develop partnerships, at home and abroad.”

Within government, Sansa continues its activities to educate and inform other departments and agencies of the value of satellite imagery to their work. “We’re trying to get government departments to use our data a lot more than they do at present to help them with their decision- making,” she explains. “We have a lot of valuable data that is not being used as extensively as we would like. To help them, we are developing more user-friendly formats for our data and we’re seeking to train officials from other departments in how to use it. This is a big drive of ours at the moment.”

Companies and entrepreneurs can also benefit from satellite imagery. Apart from using it directly, there are also opportunities for them the develop products using such data. And Sansa is eager to encourage them to do so. “We’ve recently hosted a joint workshop with the Innovation Hub, [in Pretoria], a call for local proposals to develop products based on satellite imagery and data that we have,” she reports. “The workshop focused on developing products tot meet customers’ needs and using the data available to encourage innovative technologies.”

Human capital development is another focus. One aspect of this is stimulating the interest of young South Africans in science through space. “Space is really cool,” observes Maharaj. The agency hopes that some of these young people will become space scientists, technologists and engineers in the future. At a more senior level, the EOSat-1 programme is also driving skills development, as well as helping to maintain and hopefully grow the country’s space industry to produce subsystems for international customers, as well as complete satellites. Ultimately, a national space launch capability may be established.

The agency recently formalised the industry development and localisation policy to support the growth of the local space engineering and manufacturing capability. Another integral policy for Sansa is the intellectual property (IP) policy, which allows industry access to Sansa-licensed IP, as well as providing support for universities and research councils for the development of IP to develop new technologies for commercialisation and to be used for future space missions.

Sansa is composed of four directorates – Earth Observation, Space Engineering, Space Operations and Space Science. It has facilities in Pretoria, Hartebeesthoek (west of Pretoria), Hermanus (in the Western Cape), and also has instruments on Marion Island, Gough Island and in Antarctica.