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Lagos (AND) Nigeria begun work on the design and construction of its second earth observation satellite project to be known as Sat-2

Professor Robert Boroffice, director-general, National Space Research and Development Agency said Abuja , the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) recently said that the project would be built with active participation of many local engineers.

The project is slated for launch in 2008.
Professor Robert Boroffice, said that the country has a pool of highly trained engineers to undertake the design while the
construction and launch would be done with assistance from foreign experts.
Boroffice said Sat-2 would be an improvement on Nigeria Sat-1, “Which is a medium resolution earth observation satellite.”
The director-general said when Sat-2 is launched in 2008 it would provide a wide range of applications in the areas of infrastructure, water resources management, agricultural land use, population estimation, health hazard monitoring and disaster mitigation and management.
Boroffice said Nigeria Sat-1, which was launched in 2003 from Plesetsk, Russia into 686 km polar orbit has been capturing high quality images using six cameras on board the satellite.
He said Sat-1 has apart from demonstrating good applications and commercial value has been configured in Disaster Monitoring Constellation with other United Kingdom (UK).
Boroffice added that Sat-1 has given Nigeria an added advantage of global coverage and daily revisit with provision of real time data.
By Kuayire Igho – Nigeria Bureau, AND