Senegal has launched its first-ever satellite, GAINDESAT-1A, into orbit – after numerous delays – marking the first stage of its budding national space programme SENSAT.
GAINDESAT-1A is an earth observation nanosatellite built by Senegalese engineers and technicians trained by the Centre Spatiale Universitaire de Montpellier (CSUM) via a partnership with the Senegalese government. The nanosatellite was launched from US Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on SpaceX's Falcon 9 transport rocket in its Transporter 11 mission.
According to media reports, GAINDESAT-1A’s primary mission is to gather data for state agencies, including the Directorate for Water Resource Management and Planning to improve resource management, and the National Civil Aviation and Meteorology Agency to improve weather forecasting and aviation safety.
The launch of GAINDESAT-1A has been a long time coming. First planned in 2019, GAINDESAT-1A was initially scheduled to go up in 2021, but was postponed to 2023 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and then pushed back again to the first quarter of 2024, only to be delayed again until this past Friday.
“The result of five years of hard work by our engineers and technicians, this advance marks a major step towards our technological sovereignty,” said Senegal President Bassirou Diomaye Faye in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Friday.
GAINDESAT-1A marks the first phase of Senegal's national space programme, SENSAT, which aims to aid the country’s socio-economic development through the design and operation of space tools.
In October 2023, the Senegalese government completed construction of a space control centre in Diamniadio in partnership with France's Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) and aerospace company ArianeGroup to operate GAINDESAT-1A.
At the centre’s launch, then-Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI) Moussa Baldé said that SENSAT’s goal was to “meet national needs for space products and services, and to become a space hub for the sub-region", according to the Ecofin news agency.
Senegal is the latest African country to put at least one satellite in orbit. According to SpaceHubs Africa, 61 satellites have been launched by 17 countries in Africa as of August 19. South Africa and Egypt have the most with 13 satellites each, with Nigeria a distant third with seven.
According to Business Insider Africa, citing the latest annual report from Africa Space Industry, 125 new satellites have been lined up for development in 23 African countries by 2025, while the African space industry is projected to be valued at US$22.64 billion by 2026.