Speeches given by Prof. Haim Ashad at an event held in India, in which he reviews the Israeli space program from the launch of the first comet to the new space, and instructs the Indians on what needs to be done to succeed in space
Good evening, distinguished colleagues, organizers and dear students,
I am honored to participate in the "senior technology event" organized by Chandigarh University as a guest of honor for the opening lecture of the technology conference TECH INVENT 2021.
I also wish to convey to you the blessing and creativity of the Israeli space program, which has been cooperating with India in space and other projects for over 2 decades and continues with the joint program "75 student satellites 2022".
I am Professor Ashad, former head of Israel's defense space program and also chairman of the National New Space Infrastructure Committee at the National Academy of Sciences.
As we all feel, the world today is suffering from a severe epidemic that goes through different variations, but also teaches us humans, an important lesson in modesty and compassion for others. It is now clear to us that all advanced technologies must be harnessed and joined together to create a better world.
The dire situation in the world combined with phenomena that are beyond the physics known today, rekindles the human desire to better understand the deep wisdom of our ancestors as they appear in the writings of the Vedas and in the Bible. These words were said in the past by Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, and also by Professor Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project, who, in the first atomic explosion, quoted from the Goethe poem: "I am death, the destroyer of worlds."
Fortunately, space is now more accessible to all of us and the State of Israel is a pioneer in the field of new space and its application, from middle schools and high schools to colleges and universities that lead the field with great momentum even today in many fields, such as weather monitoring, quantum communication, artificial intelligence, and deep learning.
Israel entered space and made a huge leap over the years, due to security problems and as a result of this the urge to imagine, create, and position Israel in the top three in the world in terms of creativity, according to the UK RS research in 2019 according to the number of patents and publications in Israel when the leading topics were cyber and space.
I myself completed a bachelor's degree at the Technion and also a master's degree in electrical engineering in the mid-70s and later in the US in aeronautical and space engineering and after finishing my studies I joined the technological unit in the defense system, when the State of Israel came to the conclusion that technology is a powerful engine. I was also lucky, when I was sent to complete the higher degrees in engineering in Silicon Valley in California.
Silicon Valley "took off" in the 70's with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and also the "Apollo effect" which made me embrace their energies and ecosystem which is based on three principles:
- A leader with great intelligence (IQ) but also with compassion (EQ) is required.
- It takes a team that works entirely for a purpose and not for ego.
- It is required to gather intelligence on the technology front in the world and then step forward.
From here we will briefly analyze the Israeli space program that began when Egyptian President Sadat appeared in Israel in November 1977 and proposed a peace treaty where his basic demand was the withdrawal of the IDF from the Sinai Peninsula. It was not easy at all because the size of the Sinai island was 3 times the territory of the State of Israel, and it was necessary to ensure that Egypt would not violate the demilitarization of the territory when it was evacuated.
Since in the peace agreement it was not possible to photograph the Sinai area by close-up fighter planes and the possibility of pilotless planes was not sufficiently developed at the time, therefore the only solution I proposed as the head of the R&D department in intelligence was to go into space with a photography satellite.
Of course, going into space in this year was a bold step, because it was mainly the great powers of the Soviet Union
And the United States is in a head-to-head war to gain control of space, and in Europe mainly France
Developed the "Spot" photography satellite series and the "Diamond" launcher.
My proposal to the government met with much opposition due to the enormous cost, but gradually with
The information we collected and we also found ways to prove seniors in the system and also how to deal with a tangle
The bureaucracy (a process that is explained in the books "Management of high-tech projects" which is now also translated into English) and the plan was approved in stages that required proof.
The obvious conclusion from this is that in order to build a creative space program, resources need to be mobilized at the national level and India has many of these, and what you see in the Israeli space program, which includes a variety of creativity from the Horizon satellite series to the micro and nano satellites, stems from the creative drive.
At the beginning of the Israeli space program, we reviewed the American satellites that looked like monsters that weighed 5-10 tons like the "K-Hole" observation satellites that even reached 20 tons and the problem is that it is required to launch them with a launcher that is 100 times the weight of the satellite. For example, to launch a satellite weighing 2 tons like the French Spot 1 satellite, a launcher weighing 200 tons was required which was beyond our capacity.
Israel was limited by international agreements (MTCR) and our knowledge was lacking and I learned this at the Space Center in France when I attended a course for managing an advanced space program and when I brought up there the possibility of an observation satellite weighing 200 kg my teachers laughed and claimed that it was beyond the ability of physics .
It is clear that today with the development of the new space even schools and universities can gain access to space and build small satellites themselves and this is what the State of Israel is doing in a big way and at low costs. Apparently, space is very complex and if we look at the example of the Hubble telescope, where they discovered a fault and had to repair it, there is no such possibility today, and there is no possibility of repairing a failed satellite. The limitations in space are the volume and weight so that each kg of launch costs about 50,000 dollars, and in addition to the volume and weight the space environment is unforgiving with extreme temperatures and strong radiation and you need to know how to build satellites that deal with these problems.
Another problem is that Israel cannot launch to the east with the rotation of the earth as everyone else does, because our neighbors to the east may think that this is a ballistic missile launch and not a satellite launch and start a missile war that we do not want or if a launch fails the satellite falls on their territory and that is a failure.
When I joined the Technion as a faculty member and the faculty became space engineering and aeronautics, we put effort
Great in the development of the Comet launcher, which proved to be a great success, and also the launch to the west, which required complex control and control measures in flight over the Mediterranean Sea, succeeded beyond expectations, of course
For the realization of the space program, physical infrastructures such as integration and testing centers as well as vacuum chambers
and arrays of antennas for surveillance and reception as well as an infrastructure for space cameras that we developed in cooperation with companies that specialized in the subject in a joint start-up with them.
Therefore, if we want to establish the infrastructure of a creative space program, we must first find the financing entity that can bear the costs of the infrastructure, sometimes even in stages that require proof.
In the Israeli space program, the funding agency was the defense establishment and it took a great effort to convince the General Staff and the Minister of Defense.
Admittedly, it was not easy to convince a bureaucratic and stubborn system, but the division into stages will prove the possibility of success and also of returning the investment in addition to the prestige that a successful space program will add prestige to the country.
It was also necessary to convince the academy and the professors from the mainstream that the proposal to develop a satellite of only 200 kg might perform the required task and with the help of interim proofs the academy was convinced and we proved that the task was possible between the years 1978-1980 and what remains now is to convince the industry to invest its money in the feasibility study. The process of persuasion included a competition between the three leading companies in the Israeli defense industry, while promising the participation of all of them in the future space program that will be implemented later, as a result of the cooperation of the industries the State of Israel
produces everything required for the space in self-production, which seems imaginary at the beginning of the program when
Israel was mainly engaged in agriculture and the transition to a high-tech and start-up country was the creativity that we recognize in the space world from the Horizon satellite series in the various generations to the current generation that leads in the leading technology that our partners in India know very well.
The success of the Ofek satellites, which are defined as mini-satellites of a few hundreds of kilograms, created a global turning point and the result is that most of the satellites today are of a similar type as for example the Elon satellites
Musk from the Star Link series and even those from Planet Labs and more.
Another turning point that Israel created in global space is the Technion Techsat satellite, which was the first micro-satellite weighing about fifty kilograms built by students and launched from the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan by a Russian Zenit-type launcher. The satellite included six scientific experiments that all ended successfully: superconductor experiment, X-ray detector, heavy particle detector, CCD cameras
and transmission and reception systems in the L, Uhf-Vhf fields, all this in a micro satellite of about fifty kilograms.
There are quite a few stories about the launch of the satellite and it became a breakthrough and entered the Guinness record as the student satellite that survived for over twenty years and was used both by the students of the scientific centers in Herzliya and in the periphery and was a huge success. If we take a look at the satellites in the Israeli space program, we will see different types that each time created a step forward in space.
Israel also promotes scientific programs through the space agency, such as the Ultrasat satellite whose role is to discover and track supernova phenomena and a satellite for mapping the planet Venus called "Mosar" and more.
Another environmental monitoring satellite that was launched several years ago is the "Venus" satellite that monitors agricultural crops in the fields as well as rivers and water sources to detect contamination from industrial wastewater according to their spectral signature.
Another area that arouses curiosity is the study of exoplanets that started with the Hubble satellite that he created in the past
Amazing breakthroughs in astrophysics and its continuation is the James Webb Telescope which is an intermediate step in the new space that will be launched at the end of this year to the Lagrange point in the shadow of the Sun with the ability to observe in infrared to observe the possibility of signs of life in exoplanets and in the future swarms of tiny satellites will fulfill the mission of huge telescopes in space and also The development of chips is enormous.
In conclusion, we will review a number of Israeli programs in the field of nanosatellites that are developed by the Science Center in Herzliya, which is a science high school, in collaboration with the Center for Nanosatellites at Tel Aviv University, both under the direction of Dr. Meir Ariel. The program began with Dokifat 1, the world's first nano satellite developed by high school students for communication and rescue purposes and launched in 2014, it worked well for five years and was in communication with another 250 ground stations around the planet.
In 2017, the Dokifat2 satellite was launched to test plasma density as part of a European Union program. The results were excellent and the satellite completed all the tasks and transmitted the results to the ground stations. The European Union expressed its appreciation and we were also happy that this achievement was made by the high school students. In this year we launched Dokifat 3 to observe the earth by the Indian launcher and this satellite was also a great success.
Another satellite that was launched this year is the Tel Aviv University satellite "Tausat 1" whose purpose was to detect cosmic radiation and heavy particles and it also succeeded in its mission.
At the end of this year, it is planned to launch a swarm of 8 nano-satellites built by middle school students with the support of Salah for an experiment in optical communication and they will fly in a structure that will in the future replace large satellites.
Another example of a structured flight is the Technion's 3 "Samson" satellites that function independently and the follow-on programs include a combination of young people, high school students, students at Tel Aviv University and leaders in the various faculties who work together and create advanced science. Such a satellite led by Dr. Meir Ariel was built at Tel Aviv University and is a satellite that will test quantum communication in space, which is the future that will create a revolution in the way computers work.
From here we will move on to insights from the Israeli space program:
Creativity is the most important factor in the future space because it is a thinking ability that leads to valuable products and it is also a psychological process that can be learned to create valuable innovative ideas,
I believe that India has all the technological and scientific data to promote creativity in space and our cooperation with India in various fields of defense and space over the 2 decades proves this.
And of course the collaboration with Tel Aviv University led by ITCA with the program "75 student satellites 2022" will also include quantum communication.
In conclusion, humanity is now in a critical period and the advanced technologies in cooperation may bring us closer together to a better future where we will work together for the benefit of others and not against them to create a better humanity.
Thank you very much to everyone and good luck at the conference.
More of the topic in Hayadan:
One response
are you serious? This is the guy who made a statement not long ago that aliens on Mars signed a secret agreement with the US. Does anyone still invite him to give a speech??