The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), through the Director of UNOOSA, Dr. Simonetta di Poppo, have announced the winners of the sixth round of the KiboCUBE initiative. For the third time, an African nation has emerged as the winner of the program.
The Private Higher School of Engineering and Applied Technology of Tunisia (ESPITA) emerged as one of the two winners of the Sixth Round. The award will see the Tunisian school launch the TUNSAT-1 educational CubeSat as a KiboCube program. The project’s Tunisian coordinator and general director of the school, Hana Aouinet, expressed her joy. According to her, the primary objective of the satellite program is to ensure that “30% of the satellite components will be manufactured locally in Tunisia”.
It will also involve supporting the development of the Tunisian legal framework for space activities. Regarding the secondary objectives, she noted that they intend to use the mission as an example to teach at least 500 young Tunisians the different stages of an aerospace project. Another of the secondary objectives of the project is to “introduce at least 100,000 Tunisian citizens to the application of space technologies in their daily lives.
