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| Africa: Central |
| Nigeria Satellite Blasts Into Orbit |
| 2003-09-27 |
Nigeria Sept. 27 — In a fiery liftoff, a Nigerian satellite blasted into orbit Saturday aboard a Russian rocket, propelling one of the poorest nations on earth into space for the first time. The entire nation? I thought it was just a satellite? Millions of Nigerians watched the early morning launch from Russia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome broadcast live on state television. "It makes me proud to be a Nigerian," said Prosper Sunday, a 27-year-old security guard in the commercial capital, Lagos. "It shows our nation is progressing. We’ve joined the space age." "Now we can use titanium ingots instead of stones to kill those violating Shari’a. Less weight so your arms don’t hurt, but more reuse options" The government plans to use the $13 million satellite to monitor water resources, It will be used to surveil military facilities and the country’s crude oil pipelines and infrastructure. Nigeria is one of the world’s largest exporters of oil, but thieves siphon off hundreds of thousands of barrels daily. D’oh! How about patrolling it on the ground on Earth? "It’s a great feat for Nigeria," said Joseph Akinyede of the National Space Research and Development Agency, based in the capital, Abuja. "We have a footprint in space." "a footprint in space"? On Earth, however, Nigeria is struggling to provide 132 million citizens with clean water, basic health services and education. priorities? Most villages outside state capitals have no running water or electricity, 70 percent of the country’s roads are dirt tracks, and over 30 percent of the population is illiterate. Only nine in every 1,000 residents has a telephone, only six in 1,000 a computer, according to the World Bank. Annual per capital income is about $290. "The satellite is a waste of money," said 21-year-old Gabriel Mordi, selling "They should be helping the poor. Most people here are just struggling to find something to eat." "Pygmies are out of season" In the northern city of Kano, barber Adamu Ahmed, 27, who was shaving a man in a blue-flowing robe on a sweltering street, said he was unaware of the launch since he had no radio or TV. "They haven’t told us much about space," he said. "I’ve heard of people going to the moon, but I don’t know how they got there." they walked..can’t you see the footprints? The word for satellite is "tauraru danadam," which means "human moon" in the local Hausa language. Nigeria is unlikely to man a flight to the moon anytime soon, but the government hopes one day to build and launch its own satellites. The so-called NigeriaSat-1 was produced by British-based company, Surrey Satellite Technology, with the help of Nigerian technicians trained in Britain, Olaniyi said. The Russian Kosmos-3M rocket that lifted off from Plesetsk Cosmodrome with NigeriaSat-1 carried five other satellites with it two from Russia, and one each from Turkey, Britain and South Korea. A team of 15 Nigerian scientists and engineers will control their country’s satellite from a ground station in Abuja as it circles the earth during a five to seven year life-span, Olaniyi said. It will join a constellation of half a dozen others some yet to be launched that will jointly monitor disaster areas worldwide, Olaniyi said WTF??? I can’t make stuff like this up...this is better than Scrappleface even |
| Posted by:Frank G |
| #7 It's kind of funny, they make a big deal about 'ooo we're in space now!' Yet the British built the satellite and Russia put it in orbit. Yeah, great technological leap for Nigeria, they learned how to wire money. |
| Posted by: Swiggles 2003-9-27 9:37:13 PM |
| #6 How in the hell can a diesel operate in outer space? |
| Posted by: Shipman 2003-9-27 6:13:45 PM |
| #5 Some friends of mine just moved to Nigeria from Texas. Check out www.anthisfamily.com, especially the link to their blog for some first hand accounts of how "interesting" life is there. |
| Posted by: lkl 2003-9-27 5:27:42 PM |
| #4 Frank, re-read the last part of my post. Can you say, "Al Qaeda Spy Satellite"? I knew you could! Nigeria has the oil money, but have a problem with an over-zealous Islamic minority in the north. They may be trying to find a way to put some pressure there to ease the problems they're having. Nigeria's a good place to pull this kind of deal - they're still in the Commonwealth, they have gobs of oil money (that sadly disappears into bottomless pits somewhere, and does nothing for their people), they have good connections with both Islamic and non-Islamic nations, and they're not on any terror-alert board. That doesn't mean it can't be for purely speculative reasons, or for actually doing what they've announced. There are places in Nigeria where roads CAN'T BE BUILT - at least, none that will last more than a year or two. There's also the possibility they're fronts for other interests, looking for the next mother load, in Chad, Somalia, Sudan, Congo, or wherever. You can get a LOT of data from a satellite, and it doesn't have to be just from your nation. Consider how much better we manage Alaskan resources, thanks to satellites! Not much movement during at least six months of the year up there! Try to remember that we've been imaging the Earth since at least the mid-1960's. The systems have gotten better and better. LandSat has resolution of a meter or less - more than enough to meet most non-military needs. SPOT, the French satellite, does equally well, if not better. The Russians have begun selling their imagery on the open market, for whatever it will bring. The US has declassified thousands of images, and they're available. Not much of this world's surface that hasn't been covered - I know, I've seen a large percentage of it! I'd say the reason Nigeria wants its own satellite is because that way, no one can control - or even know - what they take pictures of, or how they use the imagery. Whether that's good or bad, I leave up to you. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2003-9-27 5:24:06 PM |
| #3 OP - I was questioning their priorities first. The practices you noted for satellites are good, and considering that we get quite a bit of black gold from them, I'm sure we could've tasked sats as needed for the Agri/erosion/etc. uses if asked, along with analysis. The CIA watches all these conflicts, and could provide intel, especially on pipeline watch, good points in your post...but, what next? Somalian astronauts? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2003-9-27 5:01:16 PM |
| #2 Wouldn't it of just been cheaper to buy time on a commercial bird. Of course IIRCC the launch site is the one the Russians use for polar orbits so maybe the Nigerians are thinking of getting into the Rent-a-Spysat business. Who built it for them |
| Posted by: Cheddarhead 2003-9-27 4:56:32 PM |
| #1 Actually, we do much the same. Most of the pipelines in the US are patrolled either in small planes or from satellites. Satellites can also keep track of the health of cropland, the density and quality of forests, the amount of debris washing into rivers, and literally thousands of other things. What's most important, all this can be done by a handful of people. We were doing crop estimates in the old Soviet Union in the 70's that were within 1% of actual production. New imaging systems can provide reams of information from a handful of images taken over succeeding days. I'm not sure Nigeria has the expertise to do that caliber of information extraction, but if they do, it could be a gold mine for them. Not to mention that you can also watch your neighbors at the same time - which may be the real reason Nigeria launched this satellite. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2003-9-27 4:11:14 PM |