23 Aug 2017
Angosat will improve the quality of communications of the Angolan population
The Angolan population will enjoy better quality communications with less costs, with the launch of the first Angolan satellite “Angosat”, said the Minister of Telecommunications and Information Technologies, José Carvalho da Rocha, in Luanda.
The governor made this pronouncement when he was speaking at a lecture on “Angosat – the challenges, benefits and opportunities for the academic community” addressed to teachers and students of the Instituto Superior Politécnico Tocoista.
According to José Carvalho da Rocha, the major challenge with Angosat is to make communications more viable and in this context the Executive has invested in several actions, highlighting the placement of the optical fiber that will connect all national space and some countries African neighbors of Angola.
He announced that one of the great benefits that this satellite will bring to the country besides the transmission of knowledge is the facilitation of communications with African countries, such as the DRC, Zambia and Rwanda that will be able to use the fiber optics deployed along the Railroad of Benguela.
He also informed that next Wednesday Angola will be launching the cable that will link Angola to Brazil, being the first to link the African continent to the South American, which will facilitate communications between the two shores of the Ocean Atlantic. This cable will allow the connection next year to another cable in Brazil of which Angola also participated that connects the United States of America to this Latin American country whose costs are valued at more than 200 million US dollars, he said.
Carvalho da Rocha considered that Angola could obtain valuable financial resources with this service, once the same, once in operation, will facilitate communications between the South American continent and Asia without having to pass through Europe and Arab countries.
Regarding the transmission of knowledge, he said that in order to ensure the operation of the first Angolan satellite, the country has 37 space engineers, who will be responsible for the management of the satellite. He considered the investment of the Angolan state big, since the 320 million US dollars invested could be spent in 15 years. This makes the cost of operators less expensive, since they currently spend between $ 15 and $ 20 million a month in the use of other satellites. The amount invested in this project includes the construction and launch of Angosat, the construction of the satellite control and management station in Funda and the rental of the orbital position.
The Angolan satellite Angosat 1 is being built in Russia and has the following space segment: 14.5 E orbital position, weight 55 kilograms, payload weight 262.4 kilograms, payload power 3,753 W, frequency band CKu, number Of repeaters 16C + 6Ku and with a useful life of 15 years.
The Angosat 1 satellite control and mission center is located at Funda – Cacuaco, in the northern side of Luanda province. The Angosat 1, as an artificial geostationary satellite, is located at 36,000 kilometers at sea level, has the same speed of rotation of the earth and manages to cover a third of the globe.