The Federal
University of Technology, Akure, FUTA, scientific expertise will get a big
fillip on Thursday 1st June at 10.55pm (Nigerian time), when the
SpaceX Falcon9 Rocket launches Birds 1 satellites, comprising 5 CubeSats
belonging to Japan, Ghana, Mongolia, Nigeria and Bangladesh, into Space from
Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, USA.
“This is the
first ever university satellite to be launched in Nigeria,”
The Nigerian
CubeSat, code name NigeriaEdusat-1, is designed, built and owned by The Federal
University of Technology Akure, FUTA, in collaboration with National Space
Research and Development Agency, NASRDA, Abuja, Nigeria, and Kyushu Institute
of Technology Japan.
The Nigerian representative
on this project is Ibukun Adebolu from Department of Mechanical Engineering, The
Federal University of Technology Akure.
The CubeSats will
be launched and cropped to the International Space Station where the satellites
will be deployed into lower orbit during the last week of June 2017. The
CubeSats launch can be viewed live via the link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P11y8N22Rq0 and http://www.spacex.com/missions.
The major objective of
NigeriaEdusat-1 is capacity building, that is, domesticating the satellite
technology in a Nigerian University, FUTA, and making the technology a common
business among staff and students of the university in Nigeria for the purpose
of research, resources and environmental management and sustainable
socio-economic development of the nation.
The satellite
technology development shall continually have a great effect on Science,
Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education that is an essential
tool for a country industrial development.
Details on Thursday 1st June, 2017
Labels: Campus News
