Africa

The UAE-built Rashid Rover, the first Emirati mission to the surface of the Moon, lifted off on board a Space X Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, US, at 11.38 am UAE time on Monday, December 11, 2022. 

Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), has helped launch the construction of the Square Kilometer Array Observatory (SKAO)’s SKA-Low telescope at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory on Wajarri Country in Mid West Western Australia. 

Applications are open for the 2023 Edition of the International Space Weather Camp (ISWC). The International Space Weather Camp provides an incredible opportunity for students from South Africa, the USA, and Germany to learn about space weather, a relatively new and exciting field involving the study of the Sun and its influence on space and the Earth’s upper atmosphere as well as the impacts of solar events on space and ground-based technological systems that modern society relies on daily.

OneWeb has announced a distribution partnership agreement with Q-KON Africa, a specialist technology company that supplies solutions based on satellite, wireless, and VoIP technologies to offer broadband connectivity services in African countries. Q-KON Africa connects “off-grid” locations through their satellite broadband service, Twoobii, to core networks throughout Africa reliably and effectively.

The French National Space Agency CNES (Centre National d'Etude Spatiales), in collaboration with the European Space Agency and Aerospace Valley, organized the ActInSpace hackathon from 18 to 19 November 2022. The international spatial hackathon is dedicated to imagining products and services of tomorrow thanks to space applications, and it simultaneously held in 34 countries and 65 cities on five continents with 1,700 global participants.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the South African National Space Agency (SANSA) have renewed their partnership in lunar exploration with the groundbreaking of a new communications facility that will help the Artemis missions return humans to the Moon. The ceremony came after the signing of a Letter of Intent between NASA and the South African Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) to formalize the space exploration partnership.

Uganda and Zimbabwe have launched their respective first satellites, on November 7 2022, onto the International Space Station for subsequent deployment into orbit at a later date. The satellites, PearlAfricaSat-1 and ZimSat-1, were launched at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on the Northrop Grumman (NG-18 Cygnus) commercial cargo resupply services to the ISS).

The Chairman of the Space Committee of the Egyptian Engineers Syndicate, Dr. Muhandes Ahmed Faraj, has disclosed Egypt's plans to launch two new satellites, one of which will assist in climate change monitoring in Africa. Faraj made the disclosure during the Egyptian Space Committee of the Syndicate of Engineers' recently concluded conference on Egypt's efforts to develop its space capabilities

Continuing its cooperation with African countries, China has taken steps to strengthen its relations with Namibia in the space industry. China recently organized a "Talk with Taikonauts" session with eight African countries; Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Namibia, Ethiopia, Somalia, Algeria, and Senegal

Zimbabwe and Uganda are preparing to launch their respective first satellites into space on 6 November 2022. The satellites, ZimSat-1, and PearlAfricaSat-1 are launching into space as part of the BIRDS-5 constellation which also includes a 2U CubeSat from Japan