Only an hour before, on August 16, they had taken off from Earth. One of the 116 satellites on the launch vehicle was unique; the most were created and constructed by Western countries and companies.
Senegal, an African nation, was the first to create such a spacecraft.
GaindeSAT-1A is a tiny CubeSat that will offer communications and earth observation capabilities. The president of Senegal referred to it as a significant step toward “technological sovereignty.”
According to Kwaku Sumah, founder and managing director of the space consultancy Spacehubs Africa, the price of launching a satellite has decreased dramatically in recent years.
The market has opened up as a result of that cost decrease,” he continues. These smaller countries now have the chance to participate.
