The National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) has said that its laboratory has the capacity to download and process images from its satellites.

The agency was reacting to a story by a national newspaper that it had to turn to Britain's Surrey Satellite Technologies Limited--the company that built the satellites, to process the images it downloaded from its satellites.

But NASDRA's spokesman, Felix Ale, said in a statement Tuesday the Abuja ground station of the agency is one of the best in the world and equipped with capacities to download and process images downloaded from the three Earth Observation Satellites owned by Nigeria, i.e. NigeriaSat-1, NigeriaSat-2, and NigeriaSat-X.

He said three days after the successful launch of NigeriaSat-X and NigeriaSat-2, there were clear images captured by the two satellites and downloaded from the Abuja ground station.

According to him, the ground station for the satellites in the United Kingdom serves as a back-up station for the Abuja ground station for the testing period.