Russia, 17 April 2007: Egyptian satellite, Egyptsat-1, was successfully launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 17.
EgyptSat-1 is Egypt’s first Earth Observation Satellite which is aimed to support development in the fields of construction, cultivation and fighting desertification. It carried two sensors: an infrared imaging sensor and a high resolution multispectral imager.
EgyptSat-1 has been jointly built by Egypt’s National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences together with the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau in Ukraine and was launched onboard a Dnepr rocket in 2007. It is the first satellite from Egypt in a series of satellites for scientific research and remote sensing applications. The second and the third satellites in the series will be named Egyptsat 2 and Sahrasat, respectively.
The Egyptian satellite is one of the 14 foreign satellites carried in one rocket launched by the Russian Federal Space Agency within the day, which also included Saudisat-3, a satellite from Saudi Arabia designed to take pictures of Earth and five SaudiComsat communications satellites.
Before Egyptsat-1, Egypt has launched a number of satellites, including Nilesat 101 and Nilesat 102, for nonscientific purposes.
