NEE-01 PEGASO has been totally designed and executed by ecuadorian engineers without any foreign assistance. That is precisely what EXA, the Ecuadorian Civilian Space Agency, and the Ecuadorian government wanted, and that is also the way it needed to be done in order for the satellite to be officially referred to as Made in Ecuador. In other words, they designed and developed the whole product cycle in the south american country.
It is a nanosatellite that is classified within the Single-Unit CubeSat class. The satellite was certified to be launched into orbit on board Chinese and Russian rocket propelled vehicles. On April 26, 2013 Pegaso was launched on a Chinese rocket from Pad 2 of the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre.
In a televised interview with CNN, Ecuador's president Rafael Correa indicated that the cost of the project is around one million US dollars, which represents a substantially low cost approach in terms of budgeting for this kind of projects.
The leader of this project is Commander Ronnie Nader who is
EXA's Aerospace Operations Director. He completed his ASA/T (Advanced Suborbital Astronaut/Trained) and a CMAE (Aerospace Mission Commander) training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow. Mr. Nader also holds an Master of Science degree in Systems Engineering from the Catholic University of Guayaquil, where he graduated in 1994.
EXA receives financial support from the Ecuadorian government via the Ecuadorian Air Force.
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