Mr Eugene Avenant | Chief engineer, SANSA Space Operations
C S I R | South Africa

Eugene Avenant received his Bachelors of Engineering from the University of Pretoria in 1989. 

He started his career as a RF System engineer active in Antenna design and Radar transceiver design at the CSIR, Aerotek. He joined the CSIR Satellite Applications Centre in 1999 as a RF Systems engineer where he was involved in the upgrading and establishing of new Telemetry Tracking and Command Facilities. In 2006 he became the manager for the TT&C unit of the SAC. 

At this time SAC became involved in European Commission FP6 projects and Eugene lead the SAC team participating in AFSAGA, (African Satellite Communication and Galileo Application) with Thales Alenia Space.

When the Department of Science Technology and European Commission started the EU-SA Space Dialogue in January of 2009, Eugene represented the CSIR, SAC on the theme of Satellite Navigation starting his involvement in the establishment of SBAS in the RSA. This dialogue has since lead to two additional FP7 projects: ESESA (EGNOS Service Extension to South Africa), which he lead for the CSIR SAC. 

It was during the ESESA project that CSIR, SAC became part of the SANSA, (South African National Space Agency) as the Space Operations Directorate.

ESESA was followed by SATSA (SBAS Awareness and Training for South Africa) which concluded in 2013. Eugene represents SANSA in the EGSA initiative which aims to establish SBAS in RSA with European collaboration.
At SANSA Space Operations he holds the position of Chief Engineer making him responsible for the management of the Technical support, Operations and Projects group. SANSA Space Operations drives Space Applications which is executed in the Projects group.