Nigerians Join Italians In Outer Space

I recently talked about Italians in Outer Space and quite forgot about Nigeria's contribution to the space race ...... 

NigeriaSat 1

Yes I am not joking, Nigeria, paid the Chinese to build it a satellite, which was placed into orbit by the Russians, and thus became only the third African country after South Africa and Algeria, to have a presence in space, and all at the total cost of a mere $340m (£228m).

The satellite's ground control station was in the Nigerian capital Abuja, and was staffed by 15 Nigerian scientists, and rather ironically the satellite "NigeriaSat-1" was Nigeria's contribution to a network called the Disaster Monitoring Constellation!! (As well as providing communications for Nigerian government agencies and Broadband Internet).

So far an African success, then came the shocking news that ....... the satellite was completely crap, and it has now has been shut down to prevent it spinning out of control and damaging other satellites in orbit. Telecoms experts have described the whole enterprise as a "white elephant in space" and the whole operation was a "debacle".

From the very start the satellite had problems because the type of frequency it used was disturbed by clouds in the atmosphere, and did not work properly in Nigeria's rainy season, or during the Harmattan, when clouds of dust blow down from the Sahara. The satellite also operated on frequencies already allocated to other companies and interfered with other providers' equipment.

Minister of State for Science and Technology Alhassan Zaku told journalists it had lost power and had to be "parked, like you would park a car. If it wasn't parked and it lost all its power there would be no energy to even move it, and it would be like a loose cannon, and would keep rolling about and hit other satellites in the orbit," he told reporters.

With ministers with this sort of technical grasp in charge, we can see that Nigeria's advancement into the 19th century is in safe hands ..... bring on radio!