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PO Box 19438

Omuthiya
Namibia

10 February 2018

The Chief Executive Officer,


National Commission on Research, Science, and Technology,
Private Bag 13253,
Windhoek,
Namibia.

Dear Sir/Madam

MOTIVATION TO JOIN THE NATIONAL SPACE SCIENCE COUNCIL (NSSC)

I am writing with reference to a call for nominations to the National Space Science Council
(NSSC) advertised in The Namibian newspaper dated 30th of January 2018.

My passion for Space Science and Technology is proven by attending the United
Nations/South Africa Symposium on Basic Space Technology “Small Satellite
Missions for Scientific and Technological Advancement” Stellenbosch, South Africa,
11-14 December 2017. An integral piece of the UNOOSA Symposium was the HEPTA–
Sat Hands-on Training Workshop. HEPTA-Sat is a training tool developed by Prof.
Yamazaki from Nihon University in Japan for hands-on study of Satellite Engineering. By
attending the training, I learned the basic subsystems of satellites including structure,
electrical power supply, command and data handling, communication, ground station
and sensor as well as how to integrate those subsystems to create a working satellite as
a whole.

In 2017 I completed the Development in Africa with Radio Astronomy (DARA) basic
training sponsored by the Newton Fund. Upon completion the DARA Steering
Committee offered me an MSc scholarship to be hosted at the University of
Hertfordshire, UK. The project that I have been selected for is “Jets and Hotspots of
Powerful Radio Galaxies,” and my studies will commence in September 2018. I also
represented Namibia at the Big Data in Astronomy: A Potential Tool for Social
Innovation (BArIStA) workshop held from 6 – 12 August 2017 in Mauritius. BArIStA
was then complemented by the Square Kilometer Array – South Africa (SKA-SA)
“Science Communication workshop” which trained BArIStA participants to expertly
engage stakeholders and to communicate science/astronomy effectively.
by the strategic approach I adopted to obtain a Bachelor’s Degree in Electronics and
Telecommunications Engineering at the Namibia University of Science and Technology.
Instead of working on a design-based final year project, I opted for a research-driven
project entitled “A review of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and
determination of ionospheric Total Electron Content (TEC).” It was the first space-
related undergraduate project conducted under the Electrical and Computer
Engineering Department at NUST. It also launched an unprecedented collaboration
between NUST and the South African National Space Agency (SANSA).

For instance, Ms. Smita Francis, the coordinator of the Namibian Institute of Space
Technology (NIST) was the main supervisor and Prof Pierre Cilliers, a senior
researcher at SANSA Directorate, Hermanus assumed the co-supervisor role. Prof
Cilliers also provided the necessary GNSS data collected with SANSA’s GPS receiver
and the GPS-TEC software application needed for GNSS data processing. As a result, I
was selected to present our research findings at the NCRST’s Symposium held from 22-
23 October 2016.

I have a unique experience in the Space Science and Technology field. For instance, I was
one of the five Namibian students who participated in the National Aeronautical Space
Administration (NASA) ORACLES shadowing programme in Walvis Bay (2016).

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