OLSPACE — Olduvai Space Center
Explore the Kit
Flagship mission · Design phase

OlduvaiSat-1

Tanzania's own eye in orbit.

A 3U satellite, about 10 × 10 × 34 cm, carrying a multispectral camera. It is being designed in Dar es Salaam, and when it flies, Tanzanians will decide where it looks.

3U CubeSatMultispectral cameraEngineering model ready for test
Read the story What it will see
TANZANIA · 6°S● IMAGING
Project started in 2023 Engineering model ready for test
3U
about 10 × 10 × 34 cm
5–22 m
ground resolution, by imaging mode
~500 km
sun-synchronous low Earth orbit
~94 min
to circle the Earth once
VIS + NIR
visible and near-infrared camera
Home
planned ground station in Dar es Salaam

Mission targets. Final values are confirmed through design and testing.

The story

How a name from the oldest chapter became a satellite.

Six steps, none of them skipped.

01
Olduvai Gorge, northern Tanzania

A name from the oldest chapter

Olduvai Gorge is one of the places where the human story was dug out of the ground. When we chose the company's name, the reasoning was plain: a country that already changed how the world understands its own origins has something to say about where we go next. The satellite carries that name into orbit.

02
Marangu, foot of Kilimanjaro

Built from what's on the table

Our founder built his first radio station at twelve, in a house with no electricity, by the light of a kerosene stove. That habit of making the thing work with what is in front of you is still how we build.

03
2023 – 2024 · Morogoro, Singida, Barcelona

A small satellite that taught us a lot

MapinduziSat-1, a 1U CubeSat, was tested on the bench and then in the field, at 820 m in Morogoro and 1,052 m in Singida. In 2024 it went to FabLab Barcelona for a maker residency, where the design was refined with European maker-network engineers. It proved the basic point: satellite hardware can be built here. OlduvaiSat-1 is the next step, with three times the volume and a payload that produces something agencies can use. The OlduvaiSat-1 project started in 2023.

04
February 2026 · Dar es Salaam

Learning the rules of orbit

A satellite is also a legal object. It needs frequencies, licences and international filings before it needs a launch. In February 2026 the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology selected OLSPACE for a two-week programme on satellite communications, covering ITU filings and spectrum coordination alongside regulators from across the region.

05
Dar es Salaam

An engineering model, ready for test

The OlduvaiSat-1 engineering model is ready for test. This is the version that lives on the bench: we test it, break it and fix it, so that what we learn goes into the satellite that flies.

06
Now

Test, learn, improve

Payload, power, computer, radio, structure. Every decision gets the same test: can a Tanzanian team build it, test it and operate it? If the answer is no, we change the design, not the standard.

When OlduvaiSat-1 reaches orbit, every young Tanzanian who sees the first images of their country, taken from space by a Tanzanian company, will know that Tanzania builds things that go to space.

OLSPACE
The case

Why not just use free satellite data?

It's the first question we get, and it deserves a straight answer. Free programmes such as Copernicus and NASA's missions are a real gift, and we will keep using them. But free data is collected on schedules set abroad, for priorities set abroad. It arrives when the satellite happens to pass, which can be days or weeks after the event you needed to see. What's missing is tasking: the ability to say look there, now.

 
Free foreign data
OlduvaiSat-1
Who decides where it looks
Foreign agencies, on fixed orbital schedules
Tanzania, on every pass
How fast imagery arrives
Whenever the satellite happens to pass over, often days or weeks later
Tasked on the next pass
Where the data is handled
Processed and distributed abroad
Received, processed and stored in Tanzania
Whose priorities it serves
Those of the agency that runs the satellite
Tanzanian agencies and customers
Scenario

A flood on the Rufiji

Free dataWhatever was captured on the last scheduled pass.

OlduvaiSat-1The ground station tasks the camera for the affected area on the next pass.

Scenario

A report of illegal mining

Free dataLast week's picture, if the sky was clear.

OlduvaiSat-1An agency flags the site and the satellite images that exact location.

Scenario

A district in drought

Free dataA national mosaic, months old.

OlduvaiSat-1Fresh imagery of one district, requested when the question comes up.

What it will see

What it can see, and what it can't.

A 3U carries a small camera, so the honest question is what that buys. Switch between the views below to see the difference. The landscape is a simulation, not real imagery.

Football pitch Mine scar Stressed crops

Illustration: simulated landscape, not satellite imagery.

22 mMultispectral colour

Whole districts in one pass

Wide-area land cover: farmland, forest, water and burned ground. This is the same resolution class as Europe's Sentinel-2 programme.

!

Not a surveillance satellite

OlduvaiSat-1 can't read a number plate or recognise a person, and it isn't meant to. It's built to see land use: crops, forests, water, roads and change over time. Environmental and economic monitoring, nothing more.

Who it's built to serve

Five jobs a Tanzanian satellite can do.

Each starts with a question an agency already asks and can't answer fast enough.

Weather & floods

Seeing floods as they spread

Cloud cover, land-surface conditions and flood extent, to support flood response.

Agriculture

Crop stress, weeks early

Vegetation-health maps show where crops are struggling before a harvest visibly fails. Agriculture employs about 65% of Tanzania's workers, so weeks matter.

Wildlife

Protected areas that foot patrols can't cover

Change detection for new settlements and forest loss across game reserves and protected areas.

Environment

New mining scars, within days

Satellite change detection can flag ground that was bare last month and isn't now.

Carbon & forests

Proof that forests are still standing

Timestamped, georeferenced forest-cover imagery supports carbon-credit verification, with the data held in Tanzania.

Intended applications.

Where it gets built

The bench, the tools, the room.

Illustrations of the work behind OlduvaiSat-1: holding the 3U, the design bench, and assembly in a clean room.

Illustration13.49 Holding a 3U CubeSat in the lab
Holding the 3U airframe in the lab.
Illustration 13.49The OLSPACE design bench
The design bench: CAD, oscilloscope, soldering station and a 3U model.
IllustrationAIRLOCKCLEAN ROOM · ASSEMBLY & INTEGRATION Three technicians assembling the 3U CubeSat in a clean room
Three technicians assembling the 3U in a clean room.
Roadmap

From the bench to orbit.

Two steps done, one ready for test, three ahead.

  1. Done

    Mission concept

    What it will see, and who it will serve.

  2. Done

    Design

    Payload, power, computer, radio and structure.

  3. Ready for test

    Engineering model

    Test it, break it, fix it, on the bench.

  4. Ahead

    Flight model

    The satellite that goes up, built and qualified.

  5. Ahead

    Launch

    To a sun-synchronous orbit, about 500 km up.

  6. Ahead

    Operations

    Imaging Tanzania from orbit.

The bigger picture

Why building matters more than buying.

Space work has two halves. Downstream is using what satellites produce: imagery, signals, positioning. Upstream is making the satellites: design, build, test, launch, operate. Africa still imports most of its satellite data from machines built and run elsewhere, which means a country can spend years analysing space data and never touch a spacecraft.

That matters because upstream is where the skills, the suppliers and the next design live. A country that can only buy data rents its view of its own land. One that can build the satellite owns the schedule, trains its own engineers, and gets better with every flight.

Small satellites made this reachable. A 3U weighs about four kilograms, rides to orbit as a secondary passenger, and can be built by a small team. That is why a company in Dar es Salaam can attempt an imaging satellite at all: it is now an engineering problem, not only a national programme.

OlduvaiSat-1 is meant to be the first of several, with the same team and the same ground station improving each time. Tanzania also sits at about 6° south with more than 1,400 km of Indian Ocean coastline, a geographic advantage for space work over the longer run. Our aim is to be one of East Africa's builders of satellites, doing the upstream work at home.

UpstreamMaking the satellite
  1. Design
  2. Build
  3. Test
  4. Launch
  5. Operate
▲ OlduvaiSat-1 lives here
DownstreamUsing what it produces
  1. Imagery
  2. Analysis
  3. Decisions
What it means

For Tanzania, for engineers, for the region.

For Tanzania

Imagery that answers to Tanzanian priorities, handled in Tanzania, and tasked in hours instead of weeks.

For engineers

A real flight project to learn on, built by and with Tanzanian students and graduates, not a simulation of one.

For the region

A working example that satellites for East Africa can be designed and built in East Africa.

Join the mission

Follow the build. Or help it fly.

We are looking for partners, sponsors, universities and agencies who want to be part of a Tanzanian-built imaging satellite.

Partner with us Ways to get involved MapinduziSat-1, the 1U Read the feature article

Or write to info@olspace.co.tz