NASRDA (National Space Research & Development Agency) of Abuja, Nigeria has continued its association with SSTL, with two parallel projects - the NX and NigeriaSat-2. Like NigeriaSat-1, NX is based on the SSTL-100, but is being developed by a team of 26 Nigerian trainee engineers at SSTL's facilities in England. The Nigerian engineers will completely manage the total lifecycle of the NX and will be responsible for the delivery of the satellite to full flight specification.
Capacity building is central to the implementation of the Nigeria Space Program. As part of the Know-How Technology Training (KHTT) on the NigeriaSat-2 satellite project is the development of a training model (TM) named NigeriaSat-X. The TM will be used to give the KHTT’s hands on experience in the requirements specification, project management, system engineering, manufacture, test, assembly / integration and final system testing of a spacecraft. Unlike the NigeriaSat-1 TM, NigeriaSat-X will be built to flight specification and will be launched along with NigeriaSat-2. Twelve Nigerian engineers and scientists are currently involved in the building of the satellite using SSTL facilities since September 2006.
The NX spacecraft along with NigeriaSat-2 as secondary payloads was launched on August 17, 2011 on a Dnepr-1 launch vehicle using the SHM (Space Head Module) configuration from the Yasny/Dombarovsky launch site located in the Orenburg Region, Russia.
Instrument: SLIM6 (Surrey Linear Imager Multispectral 6 channels - but 3 spectral bands)
- 3 spectral bands (G, R, NIR)
- Total imaging swath of > 600 km
- 22m resolution imager
