SANSA Remote Sensing Atlas

History of space technology in South Africa

The South African National Space Agency (SANSA) started as Project Vanguard, America’s contribution to the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1958. Project Vanguard was managed by the American Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and the objective was to launch the world’s first “artificial” Earth satellite and to determine its orbit accurately, thereby yielding completely new information about the Earth’s gravity field and shape. The NRL designed and manufactured a precision radio interferometer tracking system called Minitrack. Minitrack could determine a radio source in space accurately to one thousandth of a degree. Seven of these Minitrack systems were deployed in North and South America to form an “electronic fence” through which a satellite transmitting in the 136MHz to 137MHz frequency band could not pass without detection. The Satellite Applications Centre had its origins in 1958 when the national Telecommunications Research Laboratory (TRL) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) agreed to operate a Minitrack in South Africa, which is strategically situated relative to the launch facilities in Cape Canaveral, and could give early confirmation that a satellite launched from Cape Canaveral is in orbit. The Minitrack system was installed with the help of engineers from the NRL and became operational inJanuary 1958. The Joburg Minitrack Station – as it was known – tracked its first Project Vanguard satellite, code-named 1958 Beta, in February 1958. Although the emphasis was on determining the position of the first satellites accurately, this soon became of secondary importance as more sophisticated instruments were placed in orbit to measure a host of physical and geophysical phenomena. To receive telemetry data from instrumented satellites soon became the primary function of the Minitrack Network. It soon became apparent that the ground of the Railway College at Esselen Park was not an ideal electromagnetic environment in which to receive weak telemetry signals from space, because of its close proximity to high-voltage lines and electric mains. With the IGY something of the past, the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was established and space research gained rapid momentum. The Joburg Minitrack Station became part of NASA’s worldwide satellite tracking and telemetry network operated by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC) in Greenbelt Maryland.

Minitrack was designed and manufactured in 1958

STADAN at Hartebeesthoek (1961)

In 1961 to 1975, Minitrack supported NASA space missions

In 1960 operations were transferred from Esselen Park to Hartebeesthoek and the Joburg Satellite and Tracking and Data Acquisition Network station (JOBURG STADAN) was born. This became one of the busiest network stations in the GSFC satellite tracking telemetry and command (TT&C) network. It was eventually equipped with three receiving links at 136MHz and later five-band and two powerful VHF transmitting systems. During its 15 years as a GSFC satellite TT&C network station, the Johannesburg STADAN received more than eight million minutes of data recorded on half a million reels of tape, tracking 400 000 satellite passes, sent millions of commands and supported more than 250 NASA launches. NASA ceased operation in South Africa at the end of October 1975. The CSIR established the Satellite Remote Sensing Centre (SRSC) in 1976 for the reception of geo-information from satellites. The first images were received from a European meteorological satellite, METEOSAT in 1977, followed by LANDSAT in 1980, and ERS 1 and 2 in 1994. In 1983 the SRSC became part of the worldwide tracking network of the French National Space Agency (CNES). The SRSC has supported more than 100 Ariane launches from Kounou in French Guinea. During the restructuring of the CSIR in 1988/1989, the SRSC became the Satellite Applications Centre (SAC), a programme of the CSIR. Since then SAC has grown to provide TT&C services to a multitude of international space agencies and aerospace companies as well as providing remote sensing data and value-added products to the geo-information sectors. In 2008 the Department of Science and Technology (DST) set out to establish a national space agency. This was realised after the approval of the National Space Agency Bill, which paved the way for the establishment of the South African National Space Agency (SANSA), launched in December 2010. The existence of SANSA is to foster research in space science, advance scientific engineering through human capital and support the creation of an environment conducive to industrial development in space technologies within the framework of national government policy. The Corporate office at SANSA is responsible for the overall operations at the three SANSA directorates. The former SAC at Hartbeesthoek became SANSA’s Space Operation directorate; the Earth Observation directorate in Pretoria and, finally, the Magnetic Observatory at Hermanus became the Space Science directorate.

In 1963 NASA built a 12-metre antenna

The First METEOSAT image taken in 1977

In 1983 became a Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) ground station partner

In 2011 CSIR SAC migrates to SANSA