Teenage girls plan Africa's first private space satellite launch

Africa is getting younger scientists — May 2017 will mark the launch of the continent’s first private satellite into space. What makes it different is that the satellite is designed by school girls within a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) program.

CNN reported that 17-year-old Brittany Bull and 16-year-old Sesam Mngqengqiswa will be launching Africa’s first satellite into space two months from now. The girls are from a high school in Cape Town and they have designed the satellite themselves, which will orbit the earth’s poles to scan Africa’s surface. Once in space the satellite will send back information collected about the continent’s agriculture and food security. The data will be used to predict Africa’s future problems. "It's a new field for us [in Africa] but I think with it we would be able to make positive changes to our economy," Mngqengqiswa told CNN. Mngqengqiswa comes from a single parent household. Her mother is a domestic worker. By becoming a space engineer or astronaut, the teenager hopes to make her mother proud, report CNN.

The satellite can also track disasters. Africa has a lot of forest fires and floods and the administration cannot get there in time. Apart from this, the satellite can also help the administration decide where to grow more trees and vegetation and monitor remote areas. The information will be transmitted by the satellite twice a day, which will help Africa towards disaster prevention.

As part of the project by South Africa’s Meta Economic Development Organisation (MEDO), the girls are working with Morehead State University in the US. A total 14 girls are being trained by satellite engineers from Cape Peninsula University of Technology, which bits to encourage more African women into STEM. The satellite is scheduled to launch in May 2017 and will make MEDO the first private company in Africa to build and launch a satellite into orbit.