The Kenya Space Agency (KSA) is set to launch two mini rockets from the Malindi Centre, the Daily Nation reports. According to the publication, this is a collaboration between the agency and the University of Rome.
This was announced during the opening of a space sector forum dubbed “The Space Sector we want in Kenya” attended by Defence CS Monicah Juma, KSA chairman, Major General (Rtd) James Arwasa, Kenya Civil Aviation Authority Director General Gilbert Kibe and others.
The mini rockets will be launched using high altitude balloons in August this year. This will be an improvement from the earlier system ot using huge rockets launched in the 80s and the 90s.
“We’ve students who are already working on building and launching the two at the Malindi Space Centre. We’re working with the University of Rome,” KSA chariman James Arwasa said. “We were expecting nine professors from the University of Rome to join us to witness these students launching the mini-rockets, but unfortunately seven tested positive for Covid-19,” he added.
This is not the first time we have seen a collaboration between Kenya and the University of Rome regarding space matters. Kenya launched its first nano satellite to space which was developed by the University of Nairobi in collaboration with University of Rome. This was after University of Nairobi was selected by University of Rome to be the first beneficiary of this program.