September 27, 2003: Nigeria became the latest nation with its own satellite when Nigeriasat1, a smallsat developed in cooperation with the UK’s Surrey Space Centre, was placed in low Earth orbit by a Kosmos-3M launcher, along with STSAT 1, Bilsat 1, UK-DMC 1 Mozhayets 4, Larets and Rubin 4-DSI. Nigeriasat 1 operated as a node in the international Disaster Monitoring Constellation, a 6-nation collaboration led by Surrey Space Technologies bringing remarkable Earth observation capabilities to the countries involved as well as the international community

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