After more than five decades, Paul (a pseudonym) still recalls the moment he became entranced by space. “We had this old, wooden black-and-white TV,” he starts. We’re sitting on the patio in his leafy backyard, and a heavy afternoon storm has just rolled in. It’s loud—we nearly shout to hear each other above the din of rain and tropical birds.
He continues, more emphatic now, “And I remember just watching it, watching as Neil Armstrong made his first steps on to the moon.” More rain, more birds. “Incredible.”
The Apollo 11 landing he was referring to was broadcast worldwide in 1969. Paul watched it from his home in Mauritius, a small island nation in the Indian Ocean. The nation had won independence a year prior after a few centuries of colonial rule, first by the Dutch, then the French, then the British. In the coming years, the country would struggle to find its political and economic footing—not ideal ground for an aspiring astronaut.
So, a young Paul did the next best thing and cultivated an expertise in satellite communications. At 16, he obtained his radio amateur license and joined the Mauritius Amateur Radio Society (MARS), and later, built a career at a telecom firm. Now retired, Paul pours his energy into helping a new generation of Mauritians forge their own connections to space.
Paul’s home, where I interviewed him in 2022, is a testament to decades spent working with communications infrastructure. In one room sits a homemade command center: Six monitors show live satellite feeds picked up by antennae on the roof. A few days before I visited, this rig was used to host a conversation between school children in France and researchers at an outpost for environmental monitoring on Crozet Island in the southern Indian Ocean. Paul handled the relay connection. Pointing to equipment around the room and pulling up programs on screen, he explained to me how he relayed the exchange through a Qatari communications satellite equipped with a special transponder for radio amateurs. He described the process precisely, in the technical language of an engineer.
Starting in 2018, Paul donated these same specialized skills to help Mauritius make its first foray into space with a small satellite called MIRSAT-1.
The story of MIRSAT-1 is emblematic of the motley collection of actors drawn into some space operations. Listing each participant creates a jumble of acronyms: The project began with the KiboCUBE program, a joint effort by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). This program, which continues into today, helps countries develop space exploration capacity by providing the opportunity to build and launch CubeSats—small, functional satellites that weigh about 2 kilograms—from the International Space Station. Previous participants include Kenya and Guatemala. The Mauritius Research and Innovation Council (MRIC), a state-funded agency tasked with coordinating technology-intensive programs, applied to participate in 2018 in partnership with the Mauritius Amateur Radio Society. Their application was successful.
Over the next year, MRIC worked with AAC Clyde Space, a Scottish manufacturer, to build and test a CubeSat. With Paul’s encouragement and knowledge, MARS members were able to provide necessary assistance with technical matters and outreach efforts. They drew on extensive expertise with telemetry, the process of exchanging data between satellites and Earth. With this, they were able to install and calibrate a much-needed communications antenna and help secure licenses with the United Nation’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU).
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Finally, on June 22, 2021, this diverse assortment of collaborators—volunteers, state employees, commercial space entrepreneurs, local politicians, and international bureaucrats—watched as the first Mauritian satellite departed the ISS to orbit Earth.
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Elsewhere around the world, in the various countries I’ve visited as part of my research, when I tell people I study the current space age, most picture a few big companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. They imagine billionaires such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos on rocket-powered joyrides, leading a projected future where space activity expands and fortunes are made back on Earth.
In Mauritius, it’s no different. When I spoke to people around the island soon after MIRSAT’s launch—in shops, at cookouts, and at public stargazing events—the news was usually eclipsed by more spectacular operations. For many, the future of space remains a story of private, wealthy actors anchored in traditionally spacefaring nations like the United States.
Yet people intimately involved in the space industry, like Paul, recognize that the space economy is a global phenomenon. The assumed divisions between private and public—with commercial space ventures on one side and state-sponsored space programs on the other—are quite blurred, depending on local contingencies. Profit, while never completely forgotten, isn’t the sole motive across every venture either.
Indeed, while the MIRSAT-1 launch didn’t grab international headlines like the Apollo 11 landing, some communities in Mauritius were watching the program closely.
Shortly after MIRSAT’s deployment, a group of Mauritian students gathered around the glow of a computer monitor at SSS Forest Side, an all-girls secondary school. Under the guidance of Vickram Mungul, their physics teacher and a MARS member, the teens attempted to contact the satellite as it passed overhead.
Together, the group dialed into the satellite’s frequency. It worked. Bit by bit, data gathered by MIRSAT’s instruments poured in. On screen, images appeared—blurry at first, then sharper. There it was: Mauritius, their home, as seen from hundreds of kilometers above.
SSS Forest Side was the first of many groups to contact MIRSAT-1 thanks to a concerted effort by MARS volunteers. The amateur radio society was interested in joining the project to bring space to a wider public and, specifically, to make the satellite meaningful to those on Earth.
To that end, MARS designed a low-cost ground station for telemetry reception from low-Earth orbit satellites on amateur radio frequencies using open-source software and simple components available at hardware stores—essentially, a fully functioning ground station at the cost of 100 euros (around US$103). Ahead of the launch, volunteers taught school and community groups how to install and use the setup and widely advertised a friendly competition around who could make first contact. (The winners received a plaque and bragging rights.)
I visited Vickram at SSS Forest Side in March 2023. He showed me the telemetry setup used to contact the satellite. We clicked through a few photographs taken by MIRSAT-1 and then ascended to the roof to look at the antennae, an inconspicuous pylon of wire and PVC. Back in the classroom, I met his students, some of whom had participated in the project to contact the satellite. They spoke excitedly about their accomplishment. One boasted that she wanted to be the first woman on Mars. Others asked about the chances of making extraterrestrial contact.
“This was one of our goals—to inspire students about space,” Vickram explained to me. “Before this, no one talked about space. We were pretty far from all that. But now, they can try to think about space and space technologies, about aliens. We can say that this is the spark that triggered it and hope it continues.”
“And what if it does continue?” I asked. “What if any of these students wants to pursue space as a career?”
“It’s difficult,” he said. “The resources aren’t really there. These students are smart. They will become architects, doctors, lawyers—typical things.”
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For now, a career in the space industry does not rank among the “typical things” young people in Mauritius dream of pursuing. But this may be changing.
As the space industry grows and companies around the globe place more satellites in space, there is growing demand for ground station capacity. Mauritius, with its unique location and a tech-savvy workforce, has the potential to be an important hub connecting the terrestrial surface and low-Earth orbit. The island already hosts one commercial station and work on another facility is nearing completion.
Still, there’s a long way to go. A few days after meeting Paul, I spoke with Beebee (a pseudonym), a research student developing artificial intelligence software for satellite data at Mauritius University. When I asked if she could continue pursuing her interest in space on the island, she looked discouraged.
Beebee sighed, “I’d probably have to go somewhere else.”
This article originally appeared in Sapiens.
