Nigeria Content Online

Nigeria has generated about £175,000 (N44 million) as
satellite monitoring royalties from the Nigeria Sat-1in the orbit,
through the supply of imagery capturing and analysing of imagery to
other countries.

Seidu Mohammed, director general of Space Research
and Development Agency (NASRDA), disclosed this yesterday in Abuja
during the 2010 ministerial press briefing of the ministry of science
and technology.

“Our international collaborators worldwide have sent
us a cheque of 175,000 pounds for sales imageries from Nigeria Sat-1,”
he said.

Mr. Mohammed also hinted that Nigeria, being a member
of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC), a global association of
satellite owners, has begun to reap the proceeds of its satellite in
the orbit.

The said revenue generated has been remitted to the federal government treasuries, according to him.

Another N600 million, which would have been spent on
land use mapping, has also been saved as SAT-1 has been used to
successfully complete the land use mapping project of the country.

The director general stated that when a similar
project was carried out in 1996, the sum of N600 million was spent and
foreign consultants were hired, “but with Nigeria Sat-1, we have
completed the mapping at no cost. Experts from our agency and the
universities were used and this has saved us N500 million,” Mr.
Mohammed said.

Mohammed Abubakar, minister of science and
technology, while corroborating the claim of the NARSDA boss, said that
space programme is no longer an exclusive venture reserved for certain
nations, but has now become an open playing field with opportunities
for all nations of the world to explore and to exploit, stressing that
“space industry in the world constitutes one of the major economic
sectors contributing substantially to income and employment.”

Moving up to Sat 2

The minister said the huge gains and advantages from
space exploration, including its spin-off benefits, have so deeply
integrated space technology into everyday life that modern society
cannot function efficiently without it.

Today, the products and services of space technology
are employed in virtually every facet of our day-to-day living such as
weather monitoring, telecommunications, environmental and water
resources management, search and rescue disaster management, national
security, medicine, etc.

Mr. Abubakar noted that the development, building,
and launch of the Nigeria’ second earth observation satellite
(NIGERIASAT-2), Niger-Sat 2, to be launched in the first quarter of
2011, will bring about the revolution of high resolution data in
Nigeria and the rest of Africa.

He stated that when Nigeria Sat-2 becomes functional,
it will also provide valuable data for the realisation of the
Millennium Development Goals (MDG), the Seven Point Agenda, and the
Vision 2020 in the key sector of the nation’s economy.

On the level of work on the new satellite, he said
“the development and construction of high resolution earth observation
satellite Nigeria Sat-2 has reached an advanced stage.”

The components are presently being transported to the launching site in Yansy, Russia.