''BRAC Onnesha'' was the first

nanosatellite A small satellite, miniaturized satellite, or smallsat is a satellite of low mass and size, usually under . While all such satellites can be referred to as "small", different classifications are used to categorize them based on mass. Satellites c ...

built in

Bangladesh Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eighth-most populous country in the world and among the List of countries and dependencies by ...

to be launched into space. The satellite was designed and built in conjunction with the Japanese

Kyushu Institute of Technology The is one of the 87 national universities in Japan. Located in Fukuoka Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, it is dedicated to education and research in the fields of science and technology. It is earlier abbreviated to KIT and is now official ...

's Birds-1 program, which has the goal of helping non-spacefaring countries to 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 Falcon 9 is a Reusable launch system#Partial reusable launch systems, partially reusable, two-stage-to-orbit, medium-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured in the United States by SpaceX. The first Falcon 9 launch was on June 4, 2010, an ...

rocket to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

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 is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

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 Birds-1 program:

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

Mongolia Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south and southeast. It covers an area of , with a population of 3.5 million, making it the world's List of countries and dependencies by po ...

Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...

, 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 BRAC University (, also known as BRACU) is a private research university located in Merul Badda, Dhaka, Bangladesh. It was established in 2001 as a branch of Sir Fazle Hasan Abed's BRAC under the Private University Act 1992. History Sir ...

, signed a contract with the

(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 A CubeSat is a class of small satellite with a form factor of cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than per unit,, url=https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5418c831e4b0fa4ecac1bacd/t/5f24997b6deea10cc52bb016/1596234122437/CDS+REV14+2020-07-3 ...

. 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., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the compa ...

launched the satellite on its CRS-11 mission to the

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

Dragon spacecraft Dragon is a family of spacecraft developed and produced by American private space transportation company SpaceX. The first variant, later named Dragon 1, flew 23 cargo missions to the International Space Station (ISS) between 2010 and 2020 be ...

on a

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 NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten NASA facilities#List of field c ...

, 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 fr ...

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

Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...

and

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

. 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 plants and the ground cover they provide. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular Taxon, taxa, life forms, structure, Spatial ecology, spatial extent, or any other specific Botany, botanic ...

urbanisation Urbanization (or urbanisation in British English) is 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 can also ...

flood A flood is an overflow of water (list of non-water floods, 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 of significant con ...

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. These resources can be either Fresh water, freshwater from natural sources, or water produ ...

, and

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

. 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