‘Historic moment’: Pakistan’s first-ever satellite iCube Qamar to launch today

iCube Qamar, a cube satellite, is all set to make its first journey into the lunar as a part of China’s Chang’e-6 mission today.

The satellite will embark on its first mission at 13:50 PM PST, May 3, 2024 (today) with the initial phase of the mission lasting for about 53 days.

The launch of iCube Qamar has been marked as the ‘historic moment’ that would allow the South Asian nation to delve deep into the space study, as per the developers.

“This is Pakistan’s first deep space mission which is indeed a historic moment and following that maybe in the future other deep space missions can be planned,” Khurram Khurshid, the head of the electrical engineering and computer science department at IST and a co-lead on the satellite project, told the international media.

He further mentioned that the historic launch of the satellite will be live telecasted on the website.

The official stated that the iCube-Q is equipped with two cameras that will capture images of the moon’s surface and send them back to Earth for examination.

Around 100 students from Pakistan’s Institute of Space Technology (IST) have contributed to developing the satellite.

The satellite was engineered and brought to life by IST, in partnership with Shanghai University in China and SUPARCO, Pakistan’s national space agency.

It is pertinent to mention that four Pakistani team members will be at the venue to witness the launch event.