Elbit is building the space telescope for the ultrasat satellite of the Weizmann Institute

Ultrasat is a space telescope in the field of ultraviolet frequencies designed to help scientists understand how heavy elements, black holes and gravitational waves were formed and to discover astronomical phenomena such as supernovae * The value of the deal is about 16 million dollars

Elbit Systems announced that it won a contract worth about 16 million dollars to supply a space telescope to the Weizmann Institute as part of the Ultraviolet Satellite for the Study of Transient Events in Space (ULTRASAT) program for observation and research in deep space. The ULTRASAT program is jointly managed and financed by the Weizmann Institute and the Israel Space Agency and is carried out in collaboration with the German research center DESY. The contract will be executed over a period of two years.

Elbit Systems will develop, manufacture and integrate a wide and highly sensitive field of vision - 200 square degrees or about 5% of the sky. It is a space telescope in the field of ultraviolet frequencies designed to help scientists understand how heavy elements, black holes and gravitational waves were formed and to detect astronomical phenomena such as supernovae (explosions of stars). Elbit Systems has already built and supplied space cameras, satellites and other electronic devices for space programs in Israel, USA, Europe, South Korea and Brazil.

Designed to do more with less, ULTRASAT is a cheap and relatively small satellite. According to its creators, ULTRASAT will help ground-based star observatories do their jobs better by capturing transient event data over an unprecedentedly wide field of view and transmitting reports of "transient events" that will help astronomers point telescopes in the direction of the occurrence.

Prof. Eli Waxman from the Weizmann Institute, the chief scientist and initiator of the Ultrasat project says In a conversation with the science website in August 2019 because Ultrasat will look at the sky in the ultraviolet range and in a wide field of view, and will be the first of its kind. "This is Israel's first scientific observatory, i.e. the first satellite that is not an Earth observation satellite, and it has two unique features - a very wide field of view, and the ability to observe in the ultraviolet (ultraviolet) range, which cannot be observed from Earth.

"These properties will help us answer some of the big questions in astrophysics, including the process of creation of pairs of neutron stars that merge and emit gravitational waves, the way supermassive black holes affect their surroundings, how stars explode, what are the sources of heavy elements in the universe, what are the characteristics of stars which planets around them may harbor life and other questions," added Prof. Waxman.

"All over the world there are ground-based stargazers that scan the night sky and try to capture signals related to short and fleeting events, such as the explosions accompanying the collisions of compact stars, which also lead to the emission of gravitational waves, but if the lens is not pointed in the right direction - which is likely to happen, because we are not Know when and where stars are going to collide - miss the whole event. Our approach is different: once launched, ULTRASAT will observe events that we do not know about in advance and record them, and then alert the stargazers on the ground about them almost immediately, so that scientific teams all over the world can focus on the events and follow them as they occur."Oren Sebag, CEO of Elbit ISTAR and EW systems, said: "We are proud to take part in this scientific effort, while contributing our abilities and experience to the effort to better understand nature. We are happy for the opportunity to collaborate with the Israeli Space Agency and the scientific community led by the Weizmann Institute and the German research center DESY."