First Arab-made satellite to keep track of UAE boom

This content was originally posted in 7DAYS UAE website at: First Arab-made satellite to keep track of UAE boom A UAE satellite is set to watch over the country’s rapid development in the years to come, engineers have said. Officials on Wednesday unveiled the final design of KhalifaSat, which will be launched into space in early 2018 and is the first satellite to be developed by UAE teams. It will send back photo and video content of cities, buildings, waterways, parks and other landscapes. The project was initiated by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) in 2013 and has already been sent to testing facilities in South Korea for assessment. Amer Al Sayegh, senior director of the Space Systems Development Department at MBRSC, said that the satellite will help the UAE government with urban planning. He said such development needs much more sophisticated data than publicly-available satellite images such as Google Earth. Al Sayegh said: “One of the uses of the KhalifaSat will be to help the government in obtaining images of specific locations in the UAE. This can help them with the development of the country. They can get pictures of the roads, any building, tunnels or infrastructure.” Al Sayegh said the satellite can also be used for images of natural disasters and for environmental reasons, as well as for mapping and ship tracking. sarwat@7days.ae Read the original story at: First Arab-made satellite to keep track of UAE boom