The waiting of 16 crore people of Bangladesh is over. Through successful launching the first satellite of the country ‘Bangabandhu-1’ is now in space. Bangladesh has become the 57th member of exclusive club of satellite owning countries and made the history.
Sate Minister for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Zunaid Ahmed Palak said, another dream is implemented. Through this Bangladesh has shown the world…we also can.
The historic event of Bangladesh's debut in the space society took place at 2:14 am Bangladesh time when the country's first geostationary communication satellite started its voyage towards the orbital slot from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, the USA.
Falcon 9, the finest rocket of American firm SpaceX, started to carry the satellite to the orbit from the Cape Canaveral launching pad at 4:14 pm US local time.
After 33 minutes of the voyage Bangabandhu-1 reached into the orbit. After launching when it reached in a certain height the stage-1 of the rocket removed from its body and stage-2 began to work. The reusable stage-1 came to the earth successfully and landed in floating drone ship on Atlantic ocean.
The launching process of Bangabandhu-1 satellite, however, was postponed early hours of Friday due to 'standard ground system auto abort'.
But in the early hours of Saturday the countdown began again. In the night Falcon-9 was launched into the space with its full speed.
The Sate Minister for ICT said, the knowledge that the engineers have attained through this project, can be applied in the country. We hope that the day is not far away when the scientists and engineers of the country will be able to build our own satellite on the soil of our homeland.
He said, the story of landing on the moon specially the story of Neil Armstrong’s voyage to the moon is delivered in the schools as lessons. The matter is still encourages the children to think at further stage. We hope that after launching of the satellite it will encourage our next generation to be successful astronaut or innovative scientists.
The government is expecting that a big amount of money can be saved from this 3 thousand crore taka project. As well as foreign exchange will come from it.
Zunaid Ahmed Palak said, there will be 40 transponders in the satellite. Of those 20 will be kept for our use and 20 transponders will be rented to foreign firms.
‘This will not only save foreign exchange but we can earn nearly 5 crore US dollars every year by offering rental service to the countries like Nepal and Bhutan. In Bangladesh currency it is more than 4 hundred crore taka.’
He said, Bangabandhu-1 satellite has established a milestone by introducing a new chapter of digital development. It will be used as a tool for attaining more success in future.
AH
