Research & Data

SANSA’s academic research seeks to better understand the Earth, the Sun, and the space immediately surrounding Earth. SANSA maintains a huge array of scientific instruments around southern Africa and in Antarctica, directly receives and archives observation data for academic and commercial use, and partners with universities around South Africa to supervise postgraduate students.

Explore our research and data:

SANSA contributes to global space research through high-impact collaborative research and development ensuring South Africa is recognised as a leader in space science and technology. SANSA plays a key global role in monitoring the near-Earth space environment and forms part of the worldwide network of space weather centres and magnetic observatories. The Agency is responsible for operating a distributed network of research infrastructure used for monitoring the near-Earth space environment over Southern Africa, Indian and Atlantic ocean, and Antarctica. The research areas covered by SANSA are diverse and are focused under four main programmes: Earth Observation, Space Science, Space Operations and Space Engineering. These focus areas include opportunities in remote sensing, Earth system science, geospatial programming, Antarctic research, climate change, space weather and ionospheric physics, aerospace and electronic engineering, computer science, and software and systems engineering.

Opportunities for study at SANSA: