Ground station ready, now wait for launch

The ground station for Brac Onnesha was inaugurated today in a fully functional state, with the only formality remaining is to launch the country’s first nano-satellite in orbit.

Brac founder and its Chairperson Sir Fazle Hasan Abed formally inaugurated the ground station which is located at the rooftop of building no. 4, Brac University.

Also read: First nanosatellite ready for launch

The projected launch date of the nano-satellite is June 2, Bijoy Talukder, a member of the six-men ground station team, told The Daily Star. “We are ready and fully operational here.”

Brac founder and its Chairperson Sir Fazle Hasan Abed cutting a cake to inaugurate the ground station of Brac Onnesha - Bangladesh's first nano-satellite - on May 25, 2017 at Brac University campus. Photo: Brac University

The ground station is the main operation centre. It will download information from the satellite, said Khalilur Rahman, associate professor at Brac University and the project’s adviser.

During launching today, Sir Fazle Hasan Abed urged the government to lend more support for research and said: “We have lots of potential in our country. We need to utilise them.”

“If the government spends even one percent of its GDP in research, Bangladesh will give birth to lots of talent. We must take initiative to keep these talents from going abroad,” he said.

Onnesha is a 10 centimetre-edged cube-shaped satellite designed, developed and assembled by three Brac students in Japan’s Kyutech. It is capable of completing one orbit 400 kilometres above the ground in 90 minutes and passing over Bangladesh four to six times every day.

It will allow high quality photographs of land to analyse vegetation, urbanisation, flood, water resources, forestry and other natural resources from overhead – most of which will be used for research purposes.