Mereja.Forum

Many have commented about this milestone of the country’s progress towards its prosperity.

The main significance of the (successful) launching of its own satellite into space is enabling the nation to build a self-confidence in doing something advanced in knowledge. This in turn will motivate many young generation to pursue the advancement of the pioneering endeavor and take it further (the Chinese Ambassador said today, it is not the sky (any more) but the deep space that is the limit).

Ethiopia is planning the launching of other types of satellites like that of communication, navigation and others in relatively near future, in addition to today’s remote sensing satellite.

On top of that Ethiopia will also benefit materially from launching its own satellite and have it rotating its own orbit in the space. The satellite is equipped with sensors to observe objects and phenomena on the ground (using electromagnetic radiations), collect the data and send it back to the earth. This data could help in many different fields like in agriculture, mining, reconnaissance of different kinds, for example of different unusual phenomena, sometimes in (near) real time.

I am not sure but the country can also generate revenue by selling the collected data to those who may need it.
It opens career opportunities in data processing and information logistics. The more you are capable to process the data the more you will gain an information from the processed data. This could in turn trigger an advancement in IT-sector in the country, which is a key knowledge in today’s world economic order.

Winners and losers:

I think the main winners of this exercise are the Ethiopian youth who can aspire now to gain advancement in knowledge of space science and if they work hard then the realization of their dream will not be impossible, any more.

Have to just get motivated and work hard!

The main losers are the inept diaspora in my view, which decided to openly sabotage and boycott any developmental initiative in the country and opted instead for channeling their relatively better earned resources into the dead ended political exercise in the country. They simply ignored pleas to support or participate into the development initiatives of the country and campaigned openly sabotaging such efforts as a whole. They could have left their own relicts in the development of the country even when they had a difference in political views to those in power.

Now Ethiopia is progressing even without the diaspora support.

If Ethiopia works hard and improves the resolution scale of the next satellite that it would like to deploy, then the market potential of the resulting data could be even more rewarding.

This first round could be considered as a pilot project, once the this one becomes successful, then the next round will be a more advanced and competitive tool that can change many different things in the whole of how the country does its businesses. It supports the goal of decision making based on the needed information.

The more you own the needed information, the more you can influence your own decision making efficiency and on top of that generate additional income for the country.

Ethiopia was buying the required data so far, which means it was dependent on the suppliers, for the accuracy, availability, quality and many other factors. Now it has the source directly in its own hands (this is a big leap forward in terms of owning information). Though you are no more dependant on others for the supply, still the degree of information (data) quality is not yet competitive enough which needs to be improved once Ethiopia gets used to the endeavor of space science.

Ethiopia's extraterrestrial eye, ETRSS-1, is carrying a multi-spectral camera, according to reports, which means capable of recording sensor-data in different areas of the electromagnetic radiation, it means also that it can generate data in multi-channel way, concurrently, I guess.

Why do we need to collect data from space? Simply it simplifies accessing data in a sort of panaromic way simulteneously and continueously from different angels over time period, enabling accessibility to areas where we can't access from ground or with aerial surveys, enabling also time-series analysis of data, among others. Data scientists will have a pivotal role in evaluating the generated data for different purposes.

The idea is not to replace the observations on the ground and possibly additional aerial surveys, rather to complement the two sides and enable simultaneous analysis of data of different sources: sort of super-imposition(?).


Ethiopia is a country which is not yet well studied and the accessibility of satellite-borne data could assist to catch-up with the backlog in this regard.

This story has sparked an almost forgotten memory in me lately. I was talking to a friend on the phone yesterday where one conversation leading to another led me into a story I had heard in the early to mid 1960’s when I was a student in the Middle East. The story was about a group of very bright students at Dire Dawa or Harar high school students along with their Indian physics teacher were able to successfully launch a miniature rocket. I was told their story by one of my Warra Cercer(Chercher) friends. As an engineer student already I was eager to have the chance to meet anyone of them but a couple years passed by before I had the chance to go back home. When I went back after a couple years I did not know I will be up to a disappointment. Someone told me that the officials had disbanded the group and their Indian physics teacher had gone back to his country because he was denied a contract renewal. That was heartbreaking news for me. But to this day no one has been able to tell me the fate of those bright students who were way ahead of their time. May be the geopolitical environment there did not allow the old country to do anything that has to do with rocketry. I want to give same shout out to anyone of them if they are still with us on this good earth and tell us about the true story about that feat which should be brought to light on this historical occasion. It will be one of the umpteen reasons why I tell everyone that The Good Lord Has Been Good To Me!!! That story happened almost 60 years ago and many of my friends and relatives from that time are with The Lord already but I am still here With His Blessings to tell/reminisce about it!!! All Glory To Our Creator!!!