In a tribute to the late President Nelson Mandela South Africa’s only currently operational satellite, TshepisoSAT (previously known as ZACube-1 and carrying the spacecraft registry number ZA-003) has been reprogrammed to transmit the name Madiba as its callsign. The signal can be received by radio amateurs and CubeSat groups worldwide.

Starting on Friday (December 6) the tiny spacecraft has been transmitting Madiba every 30 seconds. It will continue to do so for the duration of the country’s official mourning period for its first black president, revered as the founding father of today’s democratic South Africa.

TshepisoSAT is operated by the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). It was developed by the French South African Institute of Technology at CPUT and is a CubeSat (nanosatellite). It was funded by the Department of Science and Technology.

Its name, Tshepiso, means “promise”. The South African Council for Space Affairs states that this name “symbolises the global impact this great Statesman had, and what can be achieved by the young people of this country if we empower them to unlock the great promise in each of them”.

The spacecraft measures 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm and has a mass of 1.2 kg. Despite its minute size, it has a serious scientific mission – it is fitted with a high frequency radio beacon that will be used by the South African National Space Agency’s (Sansa’s) Space Science Directorate to analyse the propagation of radio waves through the ionosphere. This will form part of the directorate’s research into space weather.

It is orbiting the Earth 15 times a day, at an altitude of 600 km. It is expected to travel nearly six-billion kilometres before it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere. TshepisoSAT is controlled from a ground control station at CPUT’s Bellville campus, while the signals from the radio beacon are received by seven antennas, spread over 100 m², at Sansa’s Hermanus facility.

Madiba was President Mandela’s clan name (the Mandela family belongs to the Madiba clan) and has often been used as an affectionate and/or respectful sobriquet for the former President, who held office from 1994 to 1999.