Ethiopia will launch its first satellite on December 17 and will be used in the fields of agriculture and mining, said Solomon Belay, director of the Institute of Space Science and Technology of Ethiopia, in an interview with the Ethiopian News Agency (ENA).
Belay said the ETRSS-1 satellite will represent an annual saving of USD 12 million in imaging costs for research in that area and will be launched from China.
The director said the satellite will be controlled by a group of engineers from the Entoto Observatory, established in the capital, Addis Ababa.
The country gets most of its income from agriculture and livestock, so it says it needs a satellite to mitigate the negative effects of global climate change it has faced in recent years.
Only a few countries in sub-Saharan Africa have satellites in space, including Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa and Rwanda.
Source: Net
