Yesterday, a NASA rocket carried the first domestic satellites of Zimbabwe and Uganda into orbit.
Three Zimbabwean scientists who received support and training in Japan created and put together the country’s first satellite, known as ZimSat-1.
The PearlAfricaSat-1 satellite from Uganda was similarly developed by three of its own aerospace experts, and it hopes to be able to establish its own command centre to oversee it.
The two satellites will gather photographs once they are in orbit to aid studies into weather forecasting, as well as oversee border security and catastrophe avoidance for their respective nations.
However, the launch was not without controversy for Zimbabweans, who are going through a difficult economic moment, and it sparked a lot of discussion on social media. The project’s price wasn’t made public.
‘Launching a satellite when the economy is fragile is stupid. Poverty has increased in the last five years. You can’t buy a car when your family is starving,’ posted @patriot263.
For the past 20 years, Zimbabwe has had a severe economic crisis and is still subject to international sanctions. The IMF said in September that lower growth expectations were still in place as a result of a decline in agricultural output.
