Page 79 - SAMENA Trends - May-June 2022

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Zimbabwe Close to Launching Its First Satellite

Zimbabwe is the latest African country miniaturized satellite based around a form reports as a major milestone expected to
planning to set to launch its first satellite factor consisting of 10 cm cubes or units. enhance mineral exploration, monitoring
into orbit. Next month, or possibly in Each unit typically weighs less than 1.33 kg. of environmental hazards and droughts,
August, ZimSat-1, a nanosatellite, will The plan is for a launch between July and and mapping of human settlements and
be launched from the Japanese KIBO August depending on weather conditions. disease outbreaks, among many other
Module – Japan's science module for the The launch had been planned for February, capabilities. However, details of the precise
International Space Station (ISS). More but Covid-19 has caused a number of projects it may support are not too clear.
precisely, this is a CubeSat, a class of delays. ZimSat-1 is described in some The TechZim site suggests it could be
used for mapping to support the Zimbabwe
National Geospatial and Space Agency
(ZINGSA) National Wetlands Masterplan,
which involves a comprehensive map of the
country’s wetlands across all 10 provinces.
The launch continues the country's recently
established space program, which began in
2018 with the launch of ZINGSA. ZimSat-1
was built by local engineers working with
the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan.
It will be launched by the Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency. The Bulawayo 24
website says that, with ZimSat-1 in orbit,
Zimbabwe will become the 14th African
country to have a presence in space. The
Economist newspaper has reported that at
least 20 African countries now have space
programmes.

Telecom Italia, Eutelsat, Broadpeak Test Multicast Streaming Over Satellite

Telecom Italia (TIM) has joined forces that live content can be streamed, even Damien Sterkers, video solutions marketing
with Eutelsat and Broadpeak to trial at 4K resolution, with the same quality as director at Broadpeak. “Based on the
multicast signal distribution over satellite. a fiber connection, without restrictions multicast principle, it can totally offload
The trial employed the TIMVision box linked to the number of simultaneous from the network the peaks of streaming
in Adaptative Bit Rate (ABR) multicast viewers.” “Satellite has a clear potential traffic typically generate by highly popular
mode, Eutelsat’s Konnect satellite, which in the distribution of video streaming live events and secure a virtually unlimited
provides internet services in Europe, and technology, especially for large areas quality to an unlimited number of users in
Broadpeak’s nanoCDN solution for content with limited internet connections,” added the covered area.”
distribution. Multicast functionality enables
broadcasting and media companies to
stream live events without needing to
duplicate transmission flows. According
to the companies, this means the same
content can be distributed simultaneously
to connected users without taking up
additional network and transmission
resources, while also ensuring the
simultaneous availability of adequate
bandwidth for all other satellite services.
“The testing has shown that the benefits
of multicast transmission in terms of
quality and network resource savings,”
said Crescenzo Micheli, TIM’s head of
technology and innovation, “This means

79 MAY-JUNE 2022