Mazaalai (satellite)

Mazaalai was part of the Birds-1 constellation of satellites, built through the Joint Global Multi-Nation Birds Satellite at Japan's Kyushu Institute of Technology (KIT), a program intended to help universities in non-spacefaring countries get satellites into space. MongolSat-1, which was launched in early 2017, is sometimes reported as Mongolia's first satellite, but that satellite was in fact launched by a Bermuda-based company, ABS. It was manufactured by the United States company Boeing and was co-branded as MongolSat-1 after launch. == Design ==

Mazaalai was named after the endangered Gobi bear, native to Mongolia. It was designed and built by three young researchers of the National University of Mongolia, in collaboration with students from Ghana, Japan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria. The spacecraft was a CubeSat 1U with a mass of approximately . == Mission ==

Launch Mazaalai was sent to the International Space Station on 3 June 2017 as part of the SpaceX CRS-11 mission. The satellite was carried in a Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket, launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, LC-39A. This was the 100th launch from LC-39A and the first time SpaceX reused one of its Dragon capsules. The satellite orbited the Earth at an altitude of approximately and at an inclination of 51.64°, completing an orbit every 92.57 minutes at a velocity of . == Future work ==

A second satellite launch in 2018 was planned by the Mazaalai team members. == References ==