The year 2017 has just become a new landmark date for Mongolian space exploration: at 5.50AM (Ulaanbaatar time) on 4^th of June  its first satellite, ‘Mazaalai’, was blasted into orbit from the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida atop a Falcon 9 booster. The launch was supposed to have taken two days earlier on 2^nd June, but had to be postponed due to heavy rain at the launch site. The country’s fist satellite has been built by Mongolians with help from Japan.

Named after the Gobi bear or ‘Mazaalai’ which is to found only in Mongolia,  the satellite is capable of taking 100m resolution images at an altitude of around 400km, transmitting data through 437MHz frequency modulation, identifying satellite locations, determining air density in earth orbit and detecting and measuring radiation. ‘Mazaalai’ operates by means of an international network of ground stations.

Mongolia’s last ‘year in space history’ was 1981 – a date which special significance in the modern history of the country: in that year, aerospace engineer J.Gurragchaa became the first and only Mongolian to go into space, conducting a mission with Uzbek cosmonaut Vladimir Dzhanibekov. In Ulaanbaatar, you can see the actual ‘Soyuz’ re-entry capsule that J.Gurragchaa and V.Dzhanibekov used, on display at the Mongolian Space Museum.