Director-general of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) Mohammed Seidu disclosed this on Friday in Abuja, adding that Nigeria’s first satellite in orbit NigeriaSat-1 is to be decommissioned soon.
Seidu, who was giving a rundown of the activities of NASRDA, said the testing of Sat-2, launched in August 2011, had been completed and commercial activities would take off soon.
Seidu, declared the agency’s current financial status as the most poorly funded among its contemporaries globally, said Nigeria would be saved over two billion dollars on high resolution imagery annually by NigeriaSat-2 and NigeriaSat-X.
He said that NASRDA was currently proposing a policy to the National Assembly which would compel companies within Nigeria to first patronise Nigerian space technologies and only look outside when the technology was not in Nigeria.
The director general, who did not disclose the specific time for decommissioning NigeriaSat-1 and the takeoff of commercial activities for the NigeriaSat-2, cited security reasons as why he could not divulge the information.
Nigeria became the third African country to have a presence in space after South Africa and Algeria with the launch of NigeriaSat- 1.
Source: Xinhua