Israel's space program is largely military
By: Amnon Barzilai
In April 95, the satellite launcher "Shavit" manufactured by the Aerospace Industry (TAA) succeeded in putting the "Ofek" 3 photography satellite, also manufactured by the company, into orbit around the earth. With the launch, the State of Israel joined the exclusive club of countries that possess a photographic satellite for intelligence purposes. Since then, for more than five years, the satellite has been sending up-to-date, excellent quality photographs of areas in the Middle East, which are of security and strategic interest to Israel, every day to the ground station in Israel.
"Ofek" 3 is a small and lightweight satellite (about 230 kg) that moves in a low-altitude orbit - about 600-500 km above the earth (over the years the orbit changes and today "Ofek" 3 moves in an orbit of about 400 km "m above the earth). Unlike satellites that move around the Earth's poles, "Ofek" moves in the space between several lines of latitude in which the Middle East is located, and parallel to the Earth's equator. Such movement is economical and allows the satellite to return and visit the same geographical areas once every two to three days and bring updated information.
The decision to build a small satellite was a result of economic constraints and was also intended to enable its launch using the Israeli satellite launcher "Shavit". Otherwise, it would have been necessary to launch using a satellite launcher in one of the European countries, at a higher cost of tens of millions of dollars.
The "Ofek" photography satellites were originally developed as technological photography satellites under the auspices of the Israel Space Agency (ISA). Even the initial experiments in them in the late 80s and the first half of the 90s were considered technological experiments. SLA CEO Avi Har Even said yesterday that the "Ofek" satellite is one of the best photography satellites in the world.
The technologies that were in the hands of the Israeli industries and that enabled the launch of "Horizon" 3 were based on three main components. The "Shavit" launcher, which according to foreign publications was developed on the basis of the "Jericho" surface-to-surface missiles, manufactured by the Israel Defense Forces. The satellite, developed by a team of scientists from the Mbat plant headed by Dr. Moshe Barlev - the team that simultaneously developed the "Amos" communications satellite. And the camera, which was developed in Alup laboratories, and it enables photography at a high level of separation, the data of which is kept secret. In the newspapers of Singapore it was published in February of this year that Alup, which in the meantime has been acquired by Elbit Systems, has developed an advanced satellite camera with an even higher level of separation that was recently sold to South Korea.
In January '98, the Israeli space industry suffered a painful setback, when the attempt to expand Israel's array of satellites in space and put "Ofek" 4 into orbit around the Earth failed. The investigation revealed that the failure was not in the satellite, but in one of the launcher systems. Following the failure of the launch, then Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai announced the adoption of the Ofek project as a military satellite project. The Ministry of Defense decided on a special budget for the development of the next satellite, within the framework of the Defense Weapons Development Administration (MDA) in the Ministry of Defense. At the same time, a consortium was established to develop the civil derivative of Ofek. The next military satellite, Ofek 4, will probably be launched into space next year.
Amnon Barzilai
{Appeared in the Haaretz newspaper, 5/7/2000} The site of the science was at that time part of the IOL portal
