(Photo credit : spacetoday.org)
The kidnap of over 200 school girls from Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, Nigeria, in April, 2014 shocked not just the nation, but the entire world. Presidents, world leaders condemned it while market women led protests across the country demanding the immediate release of the girls.
Security consultants and experts have been very busy since then; many of them questioning the role that all the national satellites launched for Nigeria could play in efforts to rescue the girls. Nigeria’s first satellite, NigeriaSat-1, an Earth observation micro-satellite with a design life of five years, was launched on September 27, 2003. On August 17, 2011 a replacement, NigeriaSat-2, was launched. An equivalent satellite, NigeriaSat-X, built by Nigerian scientists and engineers from the National Space Research and Development Agency, NASRDA, was co-launched with Nigeriasat-2. On May 13, 2007 the country’s first communications satellite, NigComsat-1, was launched. It developed a Solar Array Deployment Assembly problem and de-orbited on November 11, 2008 and a replacement, NigComsat-1R, was launched December 19, 2011.
It is however, important to note that the roles these satellites can play are not limitless. This is because the work a satellite does depends on the payload it is carrying. Earth-observation satellites, like NigeriaSat-1, carry a payload of imagers or cameras that take pictures and send them down to the Control Station. NigeriaSat-1, with its six imagers, had a Ground Sampling Distance, GSD, as spatial resolution is called in the satellite industry, of 32 metres. This means that it can only “see” objects on the ground not smaller than that dimension. NigeriaSat-2 and NigeriaSat-X however, have a GSD of 2.5 metres. By 2013, the two satellites had sent over 1,400 images. These images, apart from assisting in studies on flooding, erosion, deforestation, desertification etc, are also invaluable in planning emergency response. For instance, if a road to a place is cut-off by flood, you do not dispatch trailer loads of aid to the victims without planning how to use support boats to get to them. Images from the satellites can also help security operatives understand the terrain better, see its changing nature daily, and plan their operations well.
A few Earth observation satellites with expensive, high resolution imagers are commonly used in espionage and in intelligence gathering in the fight against terrorism. If countries that have these Spy satellites, as they are called, like the United States, can avail Nigeria of its services, the faces of the abducted Chibok girls can be clearly seen from its images and their kidnappers even identified without their knowing it. This is safer than flying noisy helicopters or other low-flying aircraft, or conspicuous unmanned drones over their heads; annoying them and endangering the lives of the girls.
The second class of satellites that the country has is a communications satellite, NigComSat-1R. This large satellite weighing five tonnes, with a design life of 15 years, has 40 transponders: in Ka, Ku, C and L-bands. It is useful in telecommunications, broadcast, aviation, maritime, defence and security needs. In fact, the country’s security agencies have a safe, dedicated channel in it for their communications, which cannot be bugged. The satellite also offers an avenue for cheaper satellite bandwidth and rural telephony in Nigeria. With complementary services of other communications satellites, this means that people can report crimes to the police emergency numbers or security hotlines faster from all parts of the country.
A special type of communications satellite is the so-called Search and Rescue satellites. These satellites are invaluable in search and rescue efforts, like for airplanes downed by terrorists, sinking ships, or missing campers. Nigeria, through the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, is joined to the COSPAS SARSAT satellite-based search and rescue programme. It is mandatory for every aircraft and big ship in Nigeria to carry beacons which transmit emergency signals on harsh impact or when wet. The signal will alert NEMA of an accident or crash. The signal can also be triggered-off manually, making it useful for missing campers. There are over 600,000 of such beacons in use in the world today. In the COSPAS SARSAT constellation, a satellite flies over each beacon about 24 times a day. The frequency is important to limit the time help gets to the victims.
For a very long time, a common impression was that satellites are purely an ego thing. That was the case since the launch of the first man-made satellite, the Sputnik-1, launched by the Russians on October 4, 1957 (the first American satellite is the Explorer-1, launched January 31, 1958). The ordinary man started feeling he has something to gain, other than ego, from space science since the launch of the first weather satellite, Tiros-1, with a payload of low-resolution television and infrared cameras in April, 1960 by America.
Today, the role of satellites, no doubt, seems to be better understood, but still not fully, appreciated.
* Obiechina Obba, a science journalist, writes from Abuja.
