Sri Lanka’s first satellite set for April launch
Sri Lanka will launch its first ever satellite into space in April marking its entry into the global space age, officials from Sri Lanka’s Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education said on Wednesday.
The satellite, which will be named RAAVANA-1, is a research satellite built by two Sri Lankan students from the University of Peradeniya and the Arthur C Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies.
The satellite was designed and built at the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan and is 1,000 cubic cm in size and weighs 1.1 kg.
RAAVANA-1 was officially handed over to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on Feb. 18, and will be sent to the International Space Station on April 17, through the assistance of Cygnus-1, a spacecraft from the United States.
The satellite is expected to fulfill five missions including the capturing of pictures of Sri Lanka and its surrounding regions.
The RAAVANA-1 is expected to orbit 400 km away from earth. It will have a minimum lifespan of one and half years.
-Agencies
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The writer ought to make a distiction beween the launch of a satelite as opposed to designing a piece of equipment to be hauled into orbit by a US rocket that will take into orbit and eventually placed in a space sation.
The designers of the apparatus does not tell us as to what date it is expected to collect and what the ultimate objective of this exercise is and how it is expected to help Sri Lankans.
These guys who designed and construcated the apparatus ought to be given credited for their initiative and should be awarded some scholarsip to join a team that is involved in this type of work to further their careers
This is not a sri lankan satellite ,
The satellite was designed and built at the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan and is 1,000 cubic cm in size and weighs 1.1 kg.
Sri Lanken engineers cannot make a “kadala gotta”. never mind satellites. Most of them working abroad as toilet learners and road sweepers.
After the war Japan and Germany was not allowed to built aircraft and satellite. Japan is using Sri lanka to launch its satellite. Our engineers making a satellite? Don’t be silly.