Chalk up another successful export industry Israel is a player in: Satellites. Earlier this year, Israel’s first communication satellite, Amos-1, was sold to Intelsat, one of the largest operators of communication satellites in the world. Amos 1 will now be known as Intelsat 24, and will be used for communications in East Asia – meaning that Iranians watching channels like India’s Star TV may be getting their shows from an Israeli-made satellite!

According Amitzur Rosenfeld, director of MicroSat Israel (a joint venture between IAI and Rafael to build micro-satellites), Intelsat is directing eastward Amos-1, which is still in orbit. Speaking recently at a scientific conference in Tel Aviv, Rosenfeld said the original plan had been to use whatever fuel was left on the old Amos-1 (launched in 1996) and fire it out of the earth’s orbit, to make room for new satellites. By doing so, Israel was being a good world citizen; according to NASA, there are over 9,000 (!) satellites and/or other “artificial objects” orbiting the earth, so things can get crowded up there!

Israel was to decommission the Amos-1, since by last year, all of the country’s communications (TV, radio, phone, etc.) that Amos-1 had been used for were transferred to the more advanced Amoses 2 and 3 (the even more advanced Amos-4 is scheduled for launch next year, and Amos-5 the year after).

Israel, it turns out, is one of the most advanced countries in satellite technology anywhere, because of the launching technology it has developed, along with breakthroughs in imaging. Most of the country’s communication satellites (like the Amoses) have been launched from outside the country (France, India, Russia, etc.), because of the need to fire satellites in an eastward direction, the direction of the earth’s rotation. That works fine in Florida or Texas, but in this part of the world, an eastbound launch might be construed as an attack by Jordan or further neighbors.

So, space-bound vehicles launched from Israel must be launched westward, over the Mediterranean. Satellites launched in this direction must have much lighter payloads, in order to successfully escape the earth’s gravity. As a result, Israel developed advanced mini- and micro-satellites, with smaller components that allow satellites to fulfill all the required functions, but at a smaller payload – enabling launch from any direction, or even from the sky.

And, in addition, Israel’s new TecSAR satellite provides superior imaging capabilities, enabling sensors to pick up what is going on down below even during cloudy weather. Israel and France are developing a satellite that will enable farmers, fishermen and governments to better keep track of the land and sea environment, and according to “informed sources,” NASA is set to build a satellite in Israel using TecSAR technology to be used to map the usually very cloudy planet Venus. Nowadays, here in Israel, “space cadet” is a compliment, not an insult!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 1:55 pm and is filed under communication, development, hi-tech, israel, security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.