The establishment of a national space agency for South Africa was approved by Cabinet in July 2006 and that over the past three years the Government concluded this process. Pursuant to the South African National Space Agency Act, No. 36 of 2008, (SANSA) is currently being established as a public entity with independent, impartial and objective decision-making authority to serve local and international stakeholders and coordinate the country’s space-related initiatives.

On 1 April 2011, the Hermanus Magnetic Observatory (HMO) changed its name to SANSA Space Science and migrated from the National Research Foundation (NRF) to SANSA. 

The facility is located in Hermanus and functions as an active participant in the worldwide network of magnetic observatories (INTERMAGNET), which monitor and model variations of the Earth’s magnetic field. SANSA Space Science is also one of thirteen Regional Warning Centres globally that forms part of the ISES (International Space Environment Service) Regional Warning Centre network. Specifically, SANSA Space Science is appointed as the Regional Warning Centre for Africa.

• SANSA Space Science has a research staff with specialisation in areas of geomagnetism, atmospheric physics, ionospheric physics, magnetospheric physics and space plasmas. 
• In collaboration with its national partners (NWU, UKZN, Rhodes, CDSM), the HMO owns and/or operates a wide suite of earth-space observational and monitoring instrumentation which facilitates a research infrastructure platform for earth-space research within these areas. 
• SANSA Space Science is the Regional Warning Center for Space Weather in Africa under the International Space Environment Service (ISES), and is currently developing a Space Weather Operations Center in Hermanus.
• SANSA Space Science operates a suite of earth-space infrastructure on the South Atlantic Islands and in Antarctica for monitoring Space Weather conditions over these areas. In particular, the flagship Antarctic project is a SuperDARN HF radar that is part of a large international collaboration.
• SANSA Space Science offers technological and innovative services to the public and commercial clients in the defence and aerospace sectors. State-of-the-art equipment and infrastructure for these services include a non-magnetic climatic chamber, a large (2.5 m) three axis Helmholtz coil, a magnetic shielding chamber, an HMO invented magnetic test bench, DQ declinometers and two 4T30 theodolites. 
• A key goal of SANSA Space Science is human capacity development in the earth space science area. This is accomplished through training schools for Space Physics, supervision of postgraduate students, and lecturing at Universities that have Space Science programmes.
• SANSA Space Science aims towards the development of human capacity in earth-space science and the creation of a pool of South Africans with transferable skills in electronics, radar technology, instrumentation and measurement, signal processing, software development and data management.
• SANSA Space Science aims to advance science literacy in general and earth-space science literacy in particular among learners, educators, young people, the general public and policy-makers.