According to images from the American space company, the first operational Kenyan satellite was launched into orbit Saturday by a SpaceX rocket launched from California (United States).
The launch, which was originally scheduled for Monday evening in the United States, had been postponed several times this week due to inclement weather.
On Saturday, a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket took off at 06:48 GMT from the American base of Vandenberg (California), before deploying tens of satellites, including the Kenyan Taifa-1 (“Nation-1” in Swahili).
In a joint statement last week, the Kenyan Ministry of Defense and the Kenya Space Agency (KSA) touted “a major milestone” that should give a boost to “Kenya’s nascent space economy.”
“We benefit directly from space exploration, we will be able to improve our food security,” explained to AFP Pattern Odhiambo, an engineer at KSA, who participated in the project.
With the images of the multispectral camera of the satellite, “we will be able to have high quality data of earth observation, it will help us to predict the yield of crops”, he detailed.
Kenya had sent its first nano-satellite into space in 2018.
As of 2022, more than 50 African satellites have been sent into space, according to Space in Africa, a Nigerian company that tracks African space programs.
Egypt was the first country on the continent to send a satellite into space in 1998.