CNN
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They could be youngsters, however 17-year-old Brittany Bull and 16-year-old Sesam Mngqengqiswa have grand ambitions – to launch Africa’s first non-public satellite tv for pc into area in 2019.

They’re a part of a workforce of highschool women from Cape City, South Africa, who’ve designed and constructed payloads for a satellite tv for pc that can orbit over the earth’s poles scanning Africa’s floor.

As soon as in area, the satellite tv for pc will accumulate info on agriculture, and meals safety inside the continent.

Utilizing the info transmitted, “we will attempt to decide and predict the issues Africa can be dealing with sooner or later”, explains Bull, a scholar at Pelican Park Excessive College.

“The place our meals is rising, the place we will plant extra timber and vegetation and likewise how we will monitor distant areas,” she says. “We’ve got quite a lot of forest fires and floods however we don’t at all times get on the market in time.”

Info obtained twice a day will go in direction of catastrophe prevention.

It’s a part of a undertaking by South Africa’s Meta Financial Improvement Group (MEDO) working with Morehead State College within the US.

The women (14 in complete) are being educated by satellite tv for pc engineers from Cape Peninsula College of Know-how, in a bid to encourage extra African ladies into STEM (science, know-how, engineering, arithmetic).

If the launch is profitable, it would make MEDO the primary non-public firm in Africa to construct a satellite tv for pc and ship it into orbit.

“We count on to obtain an excellent sign, which is able to enable us to obtain dependable information,” declares an enthusiastic Mngqengqiswa, of Philippi Excessive College. “In South Africa we now have skilled a number of the worst floods and droughts and it has actually affected the farmers very badly.”

Drought and environmental results from local weather change have continued to plague the nation in recent times. An El Niño induced drought led to a shortfall of 9.3 million tons in southern Africa’s April 2016 maize manufacturing, based on a UN report.

“It has triggered our economic system to drop … This can be a method of taking a look at how we will increase our economic system,” says the younger Mngqengqiswa.

Preliminary trials concerned the women programming and launching small CricketSat satellites utilizing high-altitude climate balloons, earlier than ultimately serving to to configure the satellite tv for pc payloads.

Small format satellites are low price methods of gathering information on the planet rapidly. Checks to date have concerned amassing thermal imaging information which is then interpreted for early flood or drought detection.

“It’s a brand new discipline for us [in Africa] however I feel with it we might have the ability to make constructive modifications to our economic system,” says Mngqengqiswa.

Finally, it’s hoped the undertaking will embody women from Namibia, Malawi, Kenya, and Rwanda.

Mngqengqiswa comes from a single dad or mum family. Her mom is a home employee. By changing into an area engineer or astronaut, {the teenager} hopes to make her mom proud.

“Discovering area and seeing the Earth’s ambiance, it’s not one thing many black Africans have been in a position to do, or don’t get the chance to take a look at,” says Mngqengqiswa.

The schoolgirl is correct; in half a century of area journey, no black African has journeyed to outer area. “I wish to see this stuff for myself,” says Mngqengqiswa, “I need to have the ability to expertise this stuff.”

Her workforce mate, Bull agrees: “I wish to present to fellow women that we don’t want to take a seat round or restrict ourselves. Any profession is feasible – even aerospace.”