It’s 7 November 2022, and ZimSat-1 is ready to be shipped into orbit. Zimbabwe’s 1st orbiting satellite carrying the promise of gathering data on land use and cover, soil fertility, and water quality assessment. The nation’s first jab at space stuff.
A little over a year later, it is alleged that the satellite’s orbit decayed (weakened, slowed down) and fell back towards Earth, translating to vaporizing by the atmosphere upon re-entry on the 16th of May 2023.
(News from February 2023 about high rotation rates and slowing down. Two news about transmitting data from June 2023, 120 packets per pass, but spacecraft had decayed by then. No reception reports found on SatNOGS or Twitter.)
Nanosats Database
Did we manage to get anything from the CubeSat?
The timelines for what happened when are quite jumbled up but this is the timeline of what went down with ZimSat-1.
- 7 November 2022: ZimSat-1 is launched into space and handed over to the ISS (International Space Station)
- 2 December 2022: ZimSat-1 is deployed from the ISS into orbit
- 19 February 2023: ZimSat-1 undergoing orbital stabilization and to begin transmitting data the following month.
- 4 July 2023: ZimSat-1 is now receiving data and sending images of specific areas around Zimbabwe
According to Mr. Painos Gweme, Zimbabwe National Geospatial, and Space Agency (ZINGSA) coordinator, the satellite began transmitting data on the 4th of June 2023 and was responding well to both uplink and downlink requests. With each pass over Zimbabwe, they received 120 segments of information that were reconstructed into a complete image.
The images are very useful and can be used for various applications, which include change detection of an area over time, crop health assessment, environmental monitoring (veld fire assessments, as well as deforestation and land degradation assessment),
Painos Gweme – ZINGSA coordinator
Where the timelines start to not add up is where the Nanosats Database notes the satellite falling out of orbit in May 2023. They further go on to highlight that the timing of some news is a bit late acknowledging that the timelines are not tallying. However, this does not change the reality that ZimSat-1 is allegedly out of commission.
Zimbabwe was not the only country that sent a CubeSat into space. Uganda was part of the payload with their PearlAfricaSat-1. According to the Nanosats Database, their satellite may have faced an even more tragic demise. This satellite also fell back into the earth’s atmosphere in May 2023, specifically on the 16th.
But where ZimSat-1 was actually able to receive and transmit data as well as take a couple of pics of our teapot-shaped country, PearlAfricaSat-1 was not able to transmit anything since its deployment from the ISS.
Reentry 2023-05-16. No signal? (Unable to find confirmed successful signal reception reports as of 2022-12-20)
Nanosats Database
ZimSat-1 is actually a big win for Zim
Of course, a number of you are going to be criticizing this project and mentioning how the funds allocated to this project could be used elsewhere for more pressing issues. Those people would be partly right.
However, I believe it was a good project to work on for these reasons.
It showed that it is possible to get a satellite into space even if you do not have a fully-fledged space agency with the capacity to send stuff into orbit.
It demonstrated, on the 1st attempt that Zimbabwe has the capacity to establish communication with an orbiting satellite that it co-developed…(even though most of it was designed by Japan)…and also that we are able to receive data from that said orbiting satellite. Data that we otherwise could not have been able to obtain without such a project.
This project for me gave me the memories of my high school years. Being a science nerd since I was barely able to write, I naturally was part of the science club and when I was in A level, I was fortunate enough to be at a high school where there was an observatory. I and my fellow science club nerds tried working towards reviving this observatory. We failed to do so because of a massive lack of time, funds, and the necessary talent, and it was a big task for a couple of teenage boys and their physics teacher to tackle, but we tried and learned a lot in the process.
That for me is the story of the ZimSat-1 projects, only that in this project, they actually did it, and it worked on the first try. And that is a story that science nerds like me, young and old, in this little piece of rock we call Zimbabwe will look at and think wow. I want to do that too, but bigger.
18 comments
OOOhh well!!!
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https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaEfMOF7IUYNeiZ0Tw2l
In my community, retailers are always complaining kuti maBusiness avo haakuri. I looked at the issue and saw kuti it’s probably improper record keeping, I’m trying to solve this.
So did it improve our economy or it was another way of looting our money.
At the very least, we gained some expertise, at the most, we gained enough data to get the current status on some of the things they wanted to monitor, and maybe enough for some projections.
I don’t think there was a good chance for looting seeing as the project was straightforward cooperation with the Japanese team. Maybe some buffing on travel expenses and allowances? But who knows, Zimbos can be creative
Edwin Chabuka
is it possible to obtain or have ,access to the data it collected?
if so how can 1 get access
There is a website and app that is tracking these projects and posting the data recorded. I had the app, but my phone answered the call of it’s ancestors before Zimsat data came online. I forgot the name, but try googling it or checking for the link in the comments of techzims previous coverage. I may have posted it back then.
Good news: magetsi adzoka and Google is back on the menu.
Bad news: I couldn’t find much.
The app seems to track a previous project.
The official Japanese university newsletter for the project came to an end.
There doesn’t seem to be any public facing research papers that have been published.
Normal student turnover and staff changes at Kyushu mean the original team is more or less gone. Maybe you can track down the Zim members through our space agency as they should have been the ones operating it?
For this project, I’d say everything after this thing broke past earth’s atmosphere was a win. We had some high level knowledge transfer and experience happen in a highly under represented field in Zim.
I definitely get your closing sentiment. My primary school nephew is currently in his space geek phase. He builds and flies virtual rockets for fun! The Starship launch was like his world cup final, but he doesn’t believe he can get into leading agencies because he’s a ‘foreign security risk’. The more he and the other kids like him get to see Zimbos put the Zim flag on stuff like this cube sat, the greater the chance one of them sticks with that passion and takes us further into the milky way, here or in a foreign space agency.
Yaaah fair, but I am sure they won’t resist good talent, he should keep working on it
I’m so lost with the Cube sate,and Starlink constellations how is that different
Okay. The CubeSats are essentially low cost scientific satellites. Zimsat 1 in particular had special cameras, a small computer and the ability to transmit and receive simple radio signals. It’s main aim was to collect images to assess things like vegetation cover, the state of essential natural features like wetlands, track and asses drought, mapping, disaster management etc. The communication capability were not advanced or the main purpose of them, unlike StarLink.
StarLink is a for profit internet service provider that uses thousands of satellites in space to provide internet coverage on most of earth. The newest generation of StarLink satellites also include the capability to extend cellular coverage to providers that sign up, but that’s still in testing.
Great idea..do it again..Taking part in the Space race..Don’t have to win.just take part
I understand most sentiments being shared here, but is this program going to have stable funding into the future bcz baby steps are useless if the kid becomes a cripple.
Zimbabwe National Geospatial and Space Agency (ZINGSA) has been a
thing since 2019(?), so whether they like it or not, they have to seek out projects to justify their existence. I don’t know if funding will continue, but 1U and 2U cube satellites are a great, cost effective endeavour that can yield useful results enrich their knowledge and experience in general space operations.
tshabanguhoncho0043@gmail.com
The big and very expensive satellites used for all forms of communication including the TV bouquets used to be said to have a life expectancy of about 15 years, and they are the size of a very big bus, packed with redundancy circuitry that overrides some failed sections and some repairs can be done via software from the earth station.
Initially, what was the life expectancy of the shoebox sized satellite, in case people expect too much from it? Was it put up there not just for ego purposes, to show its citizens that the country can also compete in the technology?
For Cube Sats? About 1-5 years. The factors and configurations influencing this are beyond my pay grade.
Here is the mission statement from the official site:
BIRDS Project Overall Mission Statement
Make the first step towards creating an indigenous space program by designing, building, testing, launching and operating, the first satellites for participating nations.
BIRDS 5 Mission Statement
Build Uganda and Zimbabwe’s first satellite while improving the standardized bus system for future missions, giving continuity to the satellite development of Japan and previous missions from BIRDS-1,2,3 and 4.
Objectives
Primary Objective(s)
To design, build, test, launch and operate Uganda and Zimbabwe’s first satellite
To demonstrate the multispectral camera and DLP feasibility on 1U CubeSat
To give continuity to three missions; attitude visualisation, Imaging classification Mission (IMG-CLS) and Store & Forward (SF- WARD)
To demonstrate Particle Instrument for Nano-satellite(PINO)
To serve the Amateur radio community with APRS-Digipeater mission (APRS-DP)
Secondary Objective(s)
To give continuity to 2U structure for further projects
To demonstrate on-board image processing and classification
To demonstrate mounting of three Raspberry Pi on a 1U CubeSat
Your mentioning of science clubs brought memories. I was a member of the science club at Vainona High from 1993 to 1998. I attended several symposiums and even one a few competitions. Guys from Mazowe High always gave us a tough time. They were brilliant innovators