<story><title>Ethiopia has launched its first satellite into space</title><url>https://qz.com/africa/1772671/ethiopia-launched-its-first-space-satellite-with-chinas-help/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chirau</author><text>Why do these countries need satellites anyway, what exactly are they using them for?</text></item><item><author>rburhum</author><text>I am very familiar with the purchasing process of satellites by LATAM countries. Basically the Chinese or the French (i.e. Airbus) come in and offer you a satellite that ranges between 180M-380M USD in price depending on what you want. The price includes a building with a ground station, the launch, and some basic training. If you negotiate correctly, the full telemetry is send only to you and you process it all locally. If you don’t, then they have a hook on you and hand hold you through the entire process - at an additional cost.&lt;p&gt;Additionally, after a country purchases one, they tend to have their own development path for the future ones.&lt;p&gt;For example, the Argentinians did their first four satellites with the help of the US (SAC-A, SAC-B, SAC-C, SAC-D), the next two were done by themselves (ARSAT-1, ARSAT-2), two more with the Italians (SAOCOM-A, SAOCOM-B) and one with the Brazilians (SABIA-MAR).&lt;p&gt;It is a process filled with a lot of politics, questionable monetary interests, and pseudo national pride.&lt;p&gt;It is the new shortcut process by which countries are entering the space era. Buy a satellite when you don&amp;#x27;t know what you are doing, then co-build it with somebody, then build it by yourself. It effectively saves you billions in trial and error tests that other countries had to go through... but it really begs the question of when is it &lt;i&gt;truly&lt;/i&gt; yours, because if you don’t follow the rules (e.g. taking high res imagery of an area you are not supposed to),   “your” satellite can easily be temporarily or permanently disabled... and there goes your 300M</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>faizshah</author><text>I dunno how true this is but my african friends have told me that telecom in africa is extremely expensive and calling someone the next village over can have huge charges. So african countries under the African Union created the African Telecommunications Union to send out an african owned telecom sattelite instead of having to pay for western owned telecom sattelite usage.&lt;p&gt;Again this is second hand info and I don&amp;#x27;t know much about African politics but telecom is clearly one important reason.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ethiopia has launched its first satellite into space</title><url>https://qz.com/africa/1772671/ethiopia-launched-its-first-space-satellite-with-chinas-help/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chirau</author><text>Why do these countries need satellites anyway, what exactly are they using them for?</text></item><item><author>rburhum</author><text>I am very familiar with the purchasing process of satellites by LATAM countries. Basically the Chinese or the French (i.e. Airbus) come in and offer you a satellite that ranges between 180M-380M USD in price depending on what you want. The price includes a building with a ground station, the launch, and some basic training. If you negotiate correctly, the full telemetry is send only to you and you process it all locally. If you don’t, then they have a hook on you and hand hold you through the entire process - at an additional cost.&lt;p&gt;Additionally, after a country purchases one, they tend to have their own development path for the future ones.&lt;p&gt;For example, the Argentinians did their first four satellites with the help of the US (SAC-A, SAC-B, SAC-C, SAC-D), the next two were done by themselves (ARSAT-1, ARSAT-2), two more with the Italians (SAOCOM-A, SAOCOM-B) and one with the Brazilians (SABIA-MAR).&lt;p&gt;It is a process filled with a lot of politics, questionable monetary interests, and pseudo national pride.&lt;p&gt;It is the new shortcut process by which countries are entering the space era. Buy a satellite when you don&amp;#x27;t know what you are doing, then co-build it with somebody, then build it by yourself. It effectively saves you billions in trial and error tests that other countries had to go through... but it really begs the question of when is it &lt;i&gt;truly&lt;/i&gt; yours, because if you don’t follow the rules (e.g. taking high res imagery of an area you are not supposed to),   “your” satellite can easily be temporarily or permanently disabled... and there goes your 300M</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mirajshah</author><text>Not sure if you read the linked article:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The 70 kilogram remote sensing satellite is to be used for agricultural, climate, mining and environmental observations, allowing the Horn of Africa to collect data and improve its ability to plan for changing weather patterns for example.</text></comment>