With ‘everything ok’, Bangabandhu-1 awaits launching

As Bangabandhu-1, Bangladesh’s first flagship satellite, waits in the hangar for launch, officials have said that the rocket that will take it up to space is “ready for a go”.

The long-awaited launching will take place at 2:14am on Saturday, Bangladesh time, (4:14pm Friday, US time), if weather conditions are favourable, said Md mezbahuzzaman, project director of Bangabandhu-1.

“We have talked with the launching company SpaceX and they said everything is under their control, but without 100 per cent favorable conditions, they will not launch,” he told The Daily Star from Florida today.

The launcher also kept an available backup launching opportunity on Saturday if the second launching attempt fails, he said, adding that the first attempt, which was scheduled for the wee hours of Friday, Bangladesh time, was postponed due to a “standard ground system auto-abort”.

The satellite will be thrown to 119.1 degrees east longitude orbital slot, 36,000 kilometers away from the Earth from its launching pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Once the satellite becomes active at its orbital slot, it will be controlled from three stations in the US, Italy and South Korea for about a month and afterward it would be controlled and maintained from the ground stations located at Gazipur and Rangamati in Bangladesh.

Bangabandhu-1, a project of pride for the country, costs Tk 2,765.66 crore. It will also improve the Direct to Home (D2H) services, and ensure telecommunication services in emergency disaster affected situations. It will also ensure connectivity for the unconnected, hard to reach areas of the country, said officials related to the process.

It will have 40 transponders and few of them would be used for broadcasting TV channels.