The launch of Bangladesh’s first satellite sparked an explosion of national pride and a mini space race in the country’s colleges seven years ago. Now, the local engineers who control it are wondering what’s next.
The South Asian nation’s first satellite was built in France and launched on a SpaceX rocket in 2018. Bangladeshi engineers have since kept it orbiting.
The country invested close to $250 million in the effort. It was a high price for Bangladesh, where the average income is less than $3,000 per year. Still, it brought more reliable connectivity to companies, bureaucracies, and the military. It also expanded access to television channels for millions.
It put Bangladesh on the map as one of the few countries with satellites. Dhaka celebrated it as a beacon of a new space era. The elite engineers managing the satellite from the ground were hailed as heroes.
“We’ve hoisted the Bangladesh flag in space,” former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had said when she announced the launch. The satellite was named after her father, a founder of the country. “The Bangabandhu Satellite-1 will certainly bring revolutionary changes in our broadcast and telecommunications sector.”
Shamaun Sobhan (left) and his colleague monitor the nation’s only satellite from a ground station.
Seven years later, Hasina has been ousted from power, the satellite program is losing money, and plans for a successive satellite are uncertain.
Some of the two dozen engineers who keep the satellite and its ground communications stations running are worried.
“All of our expertise is tied to this one satellite,” a member of the team, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media, told Rest of World. “We’re stuck.”
Earlier this year, Starlink launched in Bangladesh to deliver reliable internet services to its citizens. The service from Elon Musk’s company is a satellite solution, backed by the country’s interim leader, Muhammad Yunus, who made his name bringing microloans to the masses.
The journey of Bangladesh’s unlikely satellite program and its once-vaunted engineers shows the potential payoffs and pitfalls of rushing into new technology for politics and geopolitical profile.
“Once upon a time, having satellites was a distant dream. But Bangladesh has been able to create its own satellite talent,” Khalilur Rahman, a professor of computer science and engineering at BRAC University, told Rest of World. “The problem was that our calculations were off. We had no clear guidelines.”
An antenna on the premises of the Gazipur ground station belonging to Bangladesh Satellite Company Limited.
Shamaun Sobhan was working with a private airline when he saw a job posting he couldn’t believe. The government was hiring satellite engineers.
“The ad didn’t mention any salary or benefits, but I applied anyway,” he told Rest of World. “I was most excited because I never thought I’d have an opportunity to work in the space industry.”
He landed the job in 2017 and was sent — along with about 30 other Bangladeshis — for training in France at Thales, the French aerospace and defense company that built the Bangabandhu satellite.
It was launched on a SpaceX rocket from Cape Canaveral in May 2018. For a few years, Thales employees in Bangladesh taught the team the ropes of handling a satellite over 32,000 kilometers (more than 20,000 miles) above Earth. For the last four years, the local team has mainly been on its own.
The engineers are the brains behind the calculations, coding, and communications work needed to manage and interact with the satellite. They maintain its health and keep it in the right orbit. They strive to deliver quality service for the many organizations that depend on it.
They operate out of two locations in Bangladesh, which serve as their ground control. One is a heavily guarded building in Gazipur, just outside Dhaka. It sits next to a grassy field with large satellite dishes and tall antennas. Inside, engineers hunch over terminals, staring at screens full of graphs and numbers.
They ensure the satellite is in the correct position above Earth, and that it is uploading and downloading smoothly as it beams down the shows of more than 50 television channels.
Engineers at the BSCL conduct routine maintenance on a Ku-band antenna used for satellite communications.
The engineers were heralded as pioneering heroes, leading the way as Bangladesh entered the space race. Among its neighbors, India has more than 135 satellites, Pakistan has six, and Nepal has one. Bhutan, a small landlocked nation of 780,000 people, has two.
China has nearly 1,000 satellites, and the U.S. has over 8,000.
It isn’t glamorous work for Bangladesh’s satellite engineers. They are not astronauts or rocket scientists. Still, the enthusiasm around them sparked a bubble of space-related degrees and courses in Bangladesh’s most prominent colleges.
The Aviation and Aerospace University, Bangladesh, for example, introduced two postgraduate programs in space systems engineering and satellite communications. The Military Institute of Science and Technology launched classes on space vehicle design and space propulsion.
“Our students are becoming interested in satellites, rocket science and robotics,” said Rahman, the BRAC professor. “This mental shift will set the foundation for the long-term building of technology for Bangladesh.”
Power engineers at BSCL monitor systems to ensure uninterrupted operations.
Part of the big bet on the expensive satellite was that Bangladesh could sell access to it to international companies and governments. That hasn’t gone as planned, as close to half the satellite’s capacity for organizations outside Bangladesh is not being used, according to Omar Haider, a spokesperson for Bangladesh Satellite Company Limited, the government entity that controls the program.
BSCL is ready to slash prices to attract customers, but has not found many takers, Haider said. Bangladesh’s satellite offers services that other countries don’t need, and it is scheduled to shut down in eight years, Bakhtiar Ahmed, BSCL’s company secretary, told Rest of World.
“Our big mistake was failing to reach out to more customers when we should have,” said Haider. “Now the satellite’s lifespan is half over. If it remains unused, the capacity will be wasted.”
Some observers say Bangladesh could have earned bigger dividends from the investment if it had worked with other countries and clusters of satellite services, or picked a surveillance satellite, which would have allowed it to diversify its income.
Systems administrators perform routine checks in the radio frequency equipment room.
The engineers in ground control told Rest of World they’ve appreciated the attention and are proud of what they have done for their country, but they still feel overworked and are worried about the future of the program.
They said they regularly work 12-hour shifts, often having to improvise patches to problems because bringing in new parts or experts would be too time-consuming and expensive.
“We get called in all the time, even outside our shifts,” said systems administrator Sadikul Bari. “My department manages 274 devices, and there can be problems with any one of them at any time.”
Some have quit to take their special talents abroad, or gone on furlough to study. Some are planning to leave.
Plans for the next satellite are up in the air, multiple government sources told Rest of World, requesting anonymity to discuss internal matters. Bangladesh has been in the midst of significant political change, which has made it difficult for the government to focus on space.
Widespread protests against corruption and a government seen as authoritarian led to the resignation of Hasina in 2024, ushering in an interim government under Nobel laureate Yunus.
Sobhan (right) with his colleague, Bijoy Talukder, on the premises of the Gazipur ground station.
The country must make a decision soon, as the Bangabandhu Satellite-1 is scheduled to cease operations in 2033.
The engineers are worried that their hard-earned satellite skills will become outdated or unneeded. Many hope for jobs related to Starlink’s rollout.
“Starlink satellites are among the best in the world,” a satellite engineer at BSCL said. “The company’s launch in Bangladesh definitely gives us hope.”
The article appeared in restofworld
