Space industry in Tunisia

Tunisian Space Agency

Tunis, Tunisia government

The Tunisian Space Agency (Agence Spatiale Tunisienne, website: tn.space) is Tunisia's national space authority established in 2020 to coordinate satellite development, space applications, and international space cooperation for the country. Tunisia's most notable space milestone predates the agency's formal founding: Challenge ONE, Tunisia's first satellite in orbit, was built by Tunisian private company Telnet Holding as a 3U CubeSat demonstrating IoT communications technology and was deployed from the International Space Station via Japan's J-SSOD deployer in April 2021. The agency focuses on Earth observation applications relevant to Tunisia's national priorities — monitoring desertification in the Saharan south, agricultural management across the fertile northern coastal regions, water resource mapping for a country facing water scarcity stress, and disaster risk reduction along the Mediterranean coastline. Tunisia has a cooperation framework with the European Space Agency as a European Neighbourhood country, and is a member of UNOOSA international programs. The agency also participates in African space cooperation discussions through the African Space Agency (AfSA) framework. Domestically, it supports the development of local satellite manufacturing capabilities and space education programs to grow Tunisia's nascent space industry.

Telnet Holding is a Tunisian technology and engineering group that has expanded into satellite manufacturing, becoming the company behind Challenge ONE, Tunisia's first domestically built satellite. Launched in March 2021 aboard a Russian Soyuz-2 from Baikonur, Challenge ONE made Tunisia the sixth African nation to manufacture a satellite and the first in the Maghreb. The satellite is an Internet of Things spacecraft using the LoRaWAN protocol, designed as the first of a planned constellation of around 30 satellites providing low-cost IoT connectivity. Telnet's space division designs and integrates small satellites and their communications payloads in-house.