cape town

The US space agency NASA has agreed to locate a satellite laser ranging system (SLRS) in South Africa. The facility, the first on the African continent, will be sited at the Radio-Astronomy Observatory at Hartebeeshoek in the North-West province.

The project is one of several cooperative scientific ventures jointly agreed by South Africa and the United States after a meeting last month of the US-South African Binational Commission in Cape Town, led by US vice-president Al Gore and South African deputy president Thabo Mbeki.

The commission's science and technology committee met under the joint chairmanship of Ben Ngubane, South Africa's newly reappointed minister of arts, culture, science and technology, and Neal Lane, science adviser to the US president, Bill Clinton.

South Africa will bear the operating costs of the SLRS, which has a value of $10 million. The system, which allows for accurate assessment of satellite altitude, will be used for geodetic research, as well as increasing the capacity to make more reliable long-range climate forecasts.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the South African Weather Bureau plan to collaborate on these forecasts. The last El Niño event did not materialize in South Africa, as it was offset by a warm upwelling in the Indian Ocean that could have been predicted by an SLRS.

“The new system will fill an important data gap for the African continent, ” says Rob Adam, South African deputy director-general for science and technology, adding that he is “very positive” about the science and technology panel's deliberations.

Other ventures already in progress on which agreements were finalized, many of which concern science education, include the launching by NASA last week of a microsatellite, built at the University of Stellenbosch in a project that included the training of 50 postgraduate students.