The Minister of Higher Education, Dr Khaled Abdul Ghafar presided over the Board of Director’s meeting of the Egyptian Space Agency yesterday, Tuesday 28 July 2020. The meeting was attended by Dr Mohamed Al-Qusi, CEO of the Egyptian Space Agency, and members of the Council, via video conferencing technology.
The Minister emphasized Egypt’s commitment to capacity development, development of space infrastructures and investment in the space sector.Â
Dr Mohamed Al-Qusi gave an overview of the ongoing projects by the agency and cooperation with foreign partners, local partners and government ministries in Egypt. This includes design, assembly, integration and testing of satellites, the new collaboration with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and the Ministry of Environmental Affairs. He also mentioned the agency’s ongoing work in the development of an online training platform dedicated to space-related courses to support the agency’s capacity development ambitions, which is set for launch in October 2020.Â
The CEO also mentioned the agency is about to obtain the ISO 27001 certificate and will be participating in the UNOOSA “Bartholomew” project which will make Egypt the first African country to be participating in the International Space Station (ISS) mission. The Bartolomeo mission is one of the research and orbital opportunities offered through UNOOSA’s “Access to Space for All” initiative, which aims to enable all countries, especially emerging space nations, to access and leverage the benefits of space.
At the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Washington D.C., the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and Airbus issued an Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for utilizing the Airbus Bartolomeo external platform on the International Space Station (ISS) for missions in the space environment.
