Paris, 21 September 2022, the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) – The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) have announced the winners of their joint opportunity PHI – a cooperation program under the Access to Space for All Initiative, promoting technical development and cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space. This year, MBRSC will receive two payloads as a prize to onboard the Payload Hosting Initiative “PHI”.

The PHI is intended to contribute to broadening space activities and applications and to advancing human resource development in line with the mission and objectives of UNOOSA’s Access to Space for All initiative, and MBRSC’s demonstrated commitment to promoting space science and technology.
MBRSC will provide 12U spacecraft platform, launch and ground station for PHI-1 mission. On the other hand, the selected entities will provide tested payloads to MBRSC, in which a maximum volume of 5U is available through this opportunity, ready for integration with the spacecraft and participate with MBRSC in Flight Model Assembly, Integration and Testing (FM AIT) activities.

Over the past few months and following an in-depth evaluation and extensive reviews of all received applications, a comprehensive selection process was held to make the final decision. As a result, the National Space Science Agency of the Kingdom of Bahrain (NSSA) project, “Aman”, has been selected as one of two projects, that will result in hosting the payload on the PHI-1 mission.

On this occasion, H.E. Dr. Mohamed Ebrahim Al-Aseeri, NSSA’s Chief Executive, commented: “We are delighted and honored to have been selected by the UNOOSA and MBRSC on their first PHI initiative through the “Aman” project which is considered as the first Bahraini payload fully designed, assembled, integrated and tested by NSSA. This opportunity is unprecedented in our quest to contribute meaningfully to the global effort towards the sustainable, peaceful use of outer space and building national capacity in spacecraft subsystems engineering, design, and construction”. The “Aman” project is a technology demonstration, that aims to provide secure communication between the satellite and ground segment with low complexity and low power consumption to serve IoT-based applications for the private and sensitive data from being breached.”

Dr Al-Aseeri further added: “The Bahrain Space Team will be responsible for designing, manufacturing, procuring, assembling, integrating, and testing all the items in the payload subsystem, ensuring compliance of the design with the range safety and interface requirements agreed by MBRSC. Following the launch, NSSA shall provide technical support for in-orbit validation and in-orbit operation phase of the payload Items”.