A thermal imaging satellite named after the late Dr Japie van Zyl — a Stellenbosch University graduate and Nasa legend — was launched in the US last Friday.
The Namibian-born Van Zyl earned his degree in electronic engineering from the University of Stellenbosch in 1979 and enrolled at Caltech (in the US) in 1982, where he received his master's degree and a doctorate in electrical engineering in 1983 and 1986, respectively.
Royce Dalby who, together with Van Zyl and Pieter Fossel, were the founding members of Hydrosat — the company that owns and launched Van Zyl 1 on Friday — spoke exclusively to TimesLIVE Premium about their new outer space adventure and his late colleague's influence on the project.
“I knew Japie since 2012, so unfortunately I only knew him for eight years before he died. He was kind and caring and very, very smart. Importantly, in our context he was always on the cutting edge of tech,” Dalby told TimesLIVE Premium from Luxembourg on Tuesday.
He is a satisfied space pioneer.
“Friday's launch went perfectly after several delays in the preceding weeks. We were supposed to launch in June and then July 1, then July 8 and 15, before our project finally lifted off on Friday,” Dalby said.
“The satellite is doing well. We've had contact with Van Zyl 1 and all systems seem to be doing well. We hope to get our first data from the instrument in the next few weeks,” Dalby said.
What makes Van Zyl 1 special?
“It's a thermal infrared instrument with very new technology that doesn’t need to cool down to a very low temperature. It can work at ambient temperature. It has a lot of applications. You can learn a lot about agriculture and the environment with this instrument.”
What is it used for?
“It has many applications beyond agriculture, but for now, that will be the main focus. If you use it for farming and tell farmers how to better manage their irrigation, you can increase crop growth by up to 50% and decrease water usage by up to 25%. It is really good for the planet because it saves more water and can feed more people,” Dalby said.
“It literally doesn't matter what crop you're looking at — potatoes, tomatoes, wheat, corn, and so on — you can increase production by between 30% and 50%. So this instrument has the potential to have tremendous impact on food security, and that is the main goal of what we at Hydrosat want to do,” Dalby said.
“Japie was the one who thought, 'If we could use thermal imagery to better feed the people in Africa, we would have a wonderful result.'
Last weekend, this “result” took its first leap towards becoming a reality.
“Van Zyl 1 covers the entire globe, but only once every 16 days. That means half of the time, it will be at night and half of the time by day. For agriculture, we really want the daytime imagery,” Dalby said.
“Therefore our goal is to have 16 satellites in orbit. Then we can cover the entire planet twice a day, every day. Our next launch is early next year, then we will probably launch four a year, starting in 2026.”
Even before the launch, they had already been rolling out their idea.
“We are already helping farmers all about the world by using government data from their instruments. We have a product called 'Irriwatch'. We sell it in SA,” Dalby said.
How does it work?
“We are using thermal imagery from Nasa satellites and European Space Agency satellites to give farmers information about how they can better manage their fields, where there are trouble spots, where they can conserve water and how they can better increase production.
“We did a Test grow in 2020 or ’21 when we grew two tomato fields and two potato fields next to one another. On the one tomato field and the one potato field we used thermal imagery. That tomato field produced 40% more tomatoes than the other and the potato field produced 50% more potatoes than its neighbour. Both while using less water.
Widely regarded as one of the world’s leading space scientists, Dr Van Zyl’s indelible legacy is a reminder of the contribution of Africa, and Stellenbosch University, to technological advances on a global scale
— Prof Wim de Villiers, University of Stellenbosch rector and vice-chancellor
“Let's use an analogy of people. When people get sick, they get a fever and their temperature goes up. It's the same with plants. They close their stomata and get hotter and hotter if they are not optimally cared for — whether it is a lack of water or fertiliser or whatever. We can see that from outer space,” Dalby said.
“Our sensors can tell the difference between the temperature of the leaf of a plant and the air about it by less than one degree Celsius difference. It's remarkable that from a distance of 500km away you can assess so accurately the temperature of plants.”
But why launch their own instrument if they already had access to government data and satellites?
“Our satellites are higher resolution and more frequent data, so the quality of our commercial product will just get better and better and better over the next few years as we launch more satellites and feed the data in.”
How did it all start?
“Hydrosat had three original founders in 2017 — Japie, myself and Pieter Fossel. We all came up with it together. Japie came up with the non-cool-down plan. Through his work with Nasa for more than three decades, he was very familiar with new technologies that could make it less expensive which makes it much easier to commercialise it.
“Up to now, thermal tech has been very expensive. In Nasa's Landsat program it costs up to $825m [about R14.8bn] to build and launch each satellite. The European Space Agency satellites cost $350m [about R6.2bn] per satellite to build and lunch. The Van Zyl 1 cost less than $5m [about R89.5bn] to build and launch,” Dalby said.
“Our Van Zyl 1 is based on an instrument — named the Themis — that was used on Mars to characterise the dust environment, so when we all came up with the idea to help the farmers from space it was Japie who said we could do it much cheaper. This cost difference means we can really build a lot of them and drastically improve the quality of our product and service.”
Why Hydrosat if their focus is farming?
“We called the company Hydrosat instead of something like Farmsat because, in the long run, the biggest impact we will have will be in water conservation. Now, about 70% of all fresh water used on the planet goes into agriculture. If we can help reduce the amount of water while increasing their production, we will be doing amazing work.”
Van Zyl's Western Cape alma mater is proud of their late former student. University of Stellenbosch rector and vice-chancellor Prof Wim de Villiers said Van Zyl’s “remarkable and immense contribution to space research continues with the work being done by Hydrosat’s VanZyl-1 satellite”.
“Widely regarded as one of the world’s leading space scientists, Dr Van Zyl’s indelible legacy is a reminder of the contribution of Africa, and Stellenbosch University, to technological advances on a global scale,” De Villiers said on Tuesday.
Prof Petrie Meyer, acting dean of the faculty of engineering at Stellenbosch University, also waved the Van Zyl flag on Tuesday.
“The faculty of engineering is very excited to have this satellite named after one of our most illustrious alumni. Dr Japie van Zyl was a world leader in the satellite industry, and a good friend of the faculty. We have just named our final-year project space in one of our new buildings after him,” Meyer said.
According to Nasa's website, Van Zyl joined their Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in 1986 and “made pioneering contributions to the design and development of many synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems, including SIR-C, SRTM, AIRSAR, TOPSAR, and GeoSAR.
“Van Zyl held many management roles at JPL including director for Astronomy and Physics (2006-11), associate director of Project Formulation and Strategy (2011-15), and director of Solar System Exploration (2016-19).”
He was the leader of the team that built the Mars mission's Ingenuity helicopter, but never got to see it spread its wings in Martian skies, dying in August 2020.
In April 2020 Van Zyl told this reporter he had spent enough time focused on space.
“I want to return my focus to the earth, but I will use what I learnt from space to do that. We are going to use satellites to help with water conservation and farming,” Van Zyl said.
Four months later, he was dead.
This past weekend that focus became a reality when the satellite Van Zyl 1 was launched.
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