DUBAI // A plan to build a satellite in the UAE next year will require the emirate’s space agency to almost double its satellite engineering staff.
A new facility for the construction of Khalifa Sat is being built in Al Khawaneej by the Emirates Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.
When it is ready, most of the remaining building and testing of the satellite will be carried out by Emirati engineers on UAE soil, before an anticipated launch in 2017.
Currently, the institute has 25 engineers to work on the satellite’s construction but the goal is to hire an additional 20.
“We are on track for that,” said Amer Al Sayegh, director of the institute’s space systems development department.
“We are always looking for new graduates. We’re not looking for people from a specific field. It could be electronics, aerospace, or computer science.
“People who have some experience and are looking for a fresh challenge are welcome, too.”
He said having a satellite built on home soil would attract enough attention to the project and inspire new people to join the company.
“It will make it easier to recruit more people and to share our knowledge with more people,” he said. “The team will expand exponentially.”
Khalifa Sat is the third satellite being developed by the institute. In 2009, it launched DubaiSat-1 and last year, DubaiSat-2.
The third satellite has been named Khalifa Sat to mark its significance as a national project.
The institute has had a skills transfer arrangement with Satrec, a South Korean satellite maker, since 2006. A growing team of Emirati engineers have been based in Seoul, learning the engineering skills necessary to design and build a satellite.
The design stage of Khalifa Sat was recently completed, and researchers have made an engineering model of the satellite to undergo testing in Seoul.
It was previously reported that the clean-room facility in Al Khawaneej will be ready by the first quarter of next year, and the flight model of the satellite will be assembled there.
The facility will lack expensive testing equipment such as a shaker, which is used to simulate the forces the satellite will be subject to in breaking through the atmosphere. Institute officials are planning to rent facilities in Europe to complete that stage of the testing.
mcroucher@thenational.ae
