A group of university students will make history today when Africa's first cube satellite is launched into space atop a Russian rocket.
At about 9.10am local time, the ZACUBE-1 will be launched from Yasny in Russia.
Francois Visser, the chief engineer on the CubeSat programme at the French South African Institute of Technology at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, said yesterday the satellite will orbit the ionosphereabout 600km above the earth's surface and collect "space weather data".
ZACUBE-1 is 10cm³ and weighs about 1kg.
The Department of Science and Technology funded the project with R22-million.
Visser said more than 40 postgraduate students participated in the programme though only about 10 were directly involved as engineers. -
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