''BRAC Onnesha'' was the first nanosatellite built in

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

to be launched into space. The satellite was designed and built in conjunction with Kyushu Institute of Technology

Birds-1 Birds-1 was the first iteration of a multinational program called the Joint Global Multi-Nations Birds Satellite project, or Birds project, to help countries build their first satellite. The Japanese Kyushu Institute of Technology (KIT) supp ...

program, which has the goal of helping countries build their first satellite. It was designed and built over a two-year period. The satellite had imaging capabilities and could transmit songs to Earth that were uploaded to its memory. It was launched on a Falcon 9 rocket to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ...

on 3 June 2017, after which it was released from the ''Kibō'' module. The satellite completed an orbit once every 92 minutes. The satellite deorbited on 6 May 2019.

Background

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

supports non-spacefaring countries to build their first satellite through a program called the Joint Global Multi-Nation Birds Satellite (BIRDS) project. Besides Japan, four countries participated in the

program:

Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...

Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

, and

. The five satellites were identical in their design.

Development

The idea to develop a satellite was conceived in 2013. On 15 June 2016, Syed Saad Andaleeb, Vice Chancellor at BRAC University, signed a contract with the Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech),

, on behalf of BRAC University. This led to the collaborative building of the first experimental university-made nano-satellite of

, designed, developed and assembled by three Bangladeshi students at the Kyushu Institute of Technology. On 8 February 2017, Andaleeb received ''BRAC Onnesha'' from Kyutech's President Yuji Oie and Mengu Cho, Kyutech's Director of the Laboratory of Spacecraft Environment Interaction Engineering. BRAC University took up an initiative to start space and remote sensing research in collaboration with Kyutech and the Space Research and Remote Sensing Organization (SPARRSO). BRAC University has built a ground station at its Mohakhali campus to analyse data and photographs sent from space for further research purposes. Professor Mengu Cho of Kyutech said, "''BRAC ONNESHA'' was easy to build and affordable and their prime objective was to educate the students so that they could go back to build one completely by themselves, presumably in October 2017". The two-year period spanning the development, construction, launch and operation of the satellites engaged three university students from each of the five participating countries. All five satellites had to be identical to each other in the class of a 1U CubeSat. The satellite cost about US$500,000 to manufacture and launch. They were expected to last 1.1 years.

Mission

Launch

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...

launched the satellite on its

CRS-11 SpaceX CRS-11, also known as SpX-11, was a Commercial Resupply Service mission to the International Space Station, launched successfully on 3 June 2017. The mission was contracted by NASA and was flown by SpaceX. The mission utilized a Falcon 9 ...

mission to the

(ISS) on 3 June 2017. The satellite was carried in a

Dragon spacecraft American private space transportation company SpaceX has developed and produced several spacecraft named Dragon. The first family member, now referred to as Dragon 1, flew 23 cargo missions to the ISS between 2010 and 2020 before being retired ...

on a Falcon 9 rocket, launched from NASA's

Kennedy Space Center The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 1968 ...

, LC-39A. This was the 100th launch from LC-39A and the first time SpaceX reused one of its Dragon capsules. Once on the ISS, the satellite was deployed from the Japanese ''Kibō'' module. The satellite orbited the Earth at an altitude of approximately and at an inclination of 51.6°, completing an orbit every 92.57 minutes at a velocity of .

Operations

The satellite communicated with seven

ground station A ground station, Earth station, or Earth terminal is a terrestrial radio station designed for extraplanetary telecommunication with spacecraft (constituting part of the ground segment of the spacecraft system), or reception of radio waves fro ...

s: one in each of the countries participating in the Birds-1 program, and one each in

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...

and

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. Bangladesh's ground station, inaugurated 25 May 2017, is on the top of a building at BRAC University. ''BRAC Onnesha'' was a nanosatellite shaped as a cube capable of completing one orbit above the ground in 90 minutes and passing over Bangladesh four to six times a day. The primary objective of the satellite was to image

vegetation Vegetation is an assemblage of plant species and the ground cover they provide. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic character ...

urbanisation Urbanization (or urbanisation) refers to the population shift from rural to urban areas, the corresponding decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change. It is predominantly the ...

flood A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...

water resources Water resources are natural resources of water that are potentially useful for humans, for example as a source of drinking water supply or irrigation water. 97% of the water on the Earth is salt water and only three percent is fresh water; slight ...

, and

forestry Forestry is the science and craft of creating, managing, planting, using, conserving and repairing forests, woodlands, and associated resources for human and environmental benefits. Forestry is practiced in plantations and natural stands. Th ...

. All Birds-1 satellites deorbited in May 2019. ''BRAC Onnesha'' was the second to deorbit, decaying on 6 May 2019.

References

External links

Official Birds website
{{Orbital launches in 2017 2017 in Bangladesh Satellites orbiting Earth CubeSats First artificial satellites of a country Satellites of Bangladesh Spacecraft launched in 2017 Student satellites Satellites deployed from the International Space Station Spacecraft which reentered in 2019 BRAC University