Accra, July 22, GNA – Prof Wayne Scales, an Aerospace Engineer, Virginia Tech, United States, has urged Ghana to build space technologies to solve environmental problems like flooding and galamsey confronting the country.
He said the space weather is turbulent at the equator, north and south pole with radioactive particles which negatively impact not only “our Global Positioning System (GPS), satellite television but brings about disturbances in rainfall below the equator.”
The research scientist was delivering a public lecture on the topic: “The effects of space weather on global navigation satellite systems such as GPS and remote sensing applications,” at the Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute (GSSTI) in Accra.
The GPS is a US-owned utility that provides users with positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services.
Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, he said Ghana was among countries in the sub-Saharan Africa that did not have adequate instruments to measure the space environment and come out with predictive technologies that would solve challenges the space weather posed.
“At this time there are not a lot of instruments to make measurements of the space environment and Ghana has a great opportunity to be innovative and develop new technologies to be able to detect the turbulence in space and control its effects.” Prof Scales said.
He said the technologies would boost the country’s aviation business by informing the measures to adopt in protecting aircraft and detecting starting points of floodwaters and new channels to direct the water.
Such technologies would also detect galamsey activities without sending troops to do the surveillance
Prof Wayne Scales said with the right infrastructure in place, Ghana could train students in space weather and technologies with the universities playing a major role.
Dr Kwaku Aning, Board Chair of Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC), said space technology is one of the most important technologies and that it was important Ghana developed some to manage agriculture, farming, desertification and fight the galamsey menace.
He said Ghana did not own a satellite in the space and that those satellites generating data in the space for Ghana were rented ones.
“Ghana does not have a satellite in space, Nigeria has her own and there are certain data you don’t want to put in the public domain. You rent or pay a satellite company you share the data with and depending on what you are doing with it could be dangerous,” the Board Chair said.
GNA