Posted on 01/11/2007 4:47:57 PM PST by milestogo
By BARBARA OPALL-ROME in Tel Aviv, Israel
K. S. JAYARAMAN in New Delhi, India
In a controversial break from a longstanding military space policy of strategic self-reliance, Israel has decided to launch its next spy satellite aboard India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rather than its own indigenous Shavit rocket.
Officials here say Israel's Ministry of Defense and state-owned satellite producer Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd. (IAI) are nearing conclusion with their Indian counterparts of all political and contractual agreements required for the planned October 2006 launch of the TechSAR, Israel's first synthetic aperture radar imaging satellite. On the government-to-government level, officials said, a pre-existing bilateral accord on strategic cooperation already covers most aspects of the mission.
In a Nov. 10 interview, a Ministry of Defense source estimated the PSLV launch cost at no more than $15 million, whereas the Shavit price tag ranges from $15 million to $20 million. The estimated 260-kilogram TechSAR is slated as the exclusive payload aboard the PSLV, which will be launched from the Indian Space Research Organisation's Satish Dhawan Space Center on the nation's southeastern coast. If all agreements are finalized in the coming months, as expected, IAI will ship the satellite to the Indian launch site by summer.
Doron Suslik, IAI's deputy corporate vice president for communications, declined all comment on TechSAR launch matters when contacted Nov. 11.
Reached by telephone Nov. 11, K.R. Sridharamurthy, executive director of Antrix Corp., the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation, said he was unable to comment due to the "confidential nature of the negotiations."
Government and industry sources here conceded that Israel's embrace of the PSLV was driven in large part by a loss of confidence in the Shavit, which has had reliability problems over the past decade. The latest Shavit failure, in September 2004, destroyed the defense ministry's estimated $100 million Ofeq-6 electro-optical imaging satellite.
But several Israeli officials insisted that other factors beyond risk mitigation led to the PSLV choice, including the desire to strengthen strategic cooperation with India, the defense ministry's largest export customer. According to multiple sources, India has begun discussions with the defense ministry and IAI regarding a possible purchase of a clone of the TechSAR satellite to enhance New Delhi's strategic intelligence and targeting capabilities.
Another factor influencing the PSLV decision was the defense ministry's need to accommodate new orbital requirements for the TechSAR. In a Nov. 10 interview, an industry executive said Israel's plans to offer TechSAR imagery to key export clients necessitated a higher-inclination orbit than the Shavit could achieve.
"It was decided fairly late in the program to make certain TechSAR footprints available to high-value export customers. And if they intended to attract customers in different parts of the world, they realized a higher inclination would help capture more imaging areas," the executive said.
Geography and politics dictate that the Shavit rocket launch westward over the Mediterranean, meaning its payloads can only reach orbits that cover low latitudes. To provide global coverage, satellites must be operate in high-inclination orbits that take them over the poles, and that requires launching them on a northward or southward trajectory, which is not an option for Shavit.
In contrast, the Indian PSLV has no such restrictions.
Other industry experts here, however, expressed doubt that a desire for a high orbital inclination drove the PSLV decision. "The Shavit could have accommodated [the defense ministry's] business plans, but the decision was made that we could not afford another failure," insisted one executive.
And while supporters of the Shavit were disappointed by the move to the Indian launcher, they insisted that the Israeli government has not forsaken its policy of space launch self-reliance and will deliver its planned Ofeq-7 into orbit using an improved version of the homegrown launcher.
Rachek Naidel-Ashkenazi, a spokeswoman for the defense ministry, declined to discuss specific plans for the TechSAR launch. Nevertheless, she said Israel intends to launch future military spacecraft with the Shavit. "Our policy is to preserve an independent launch capability. That has not changed," she said Nov. 11.
Tal Inbar, a space expert and research fellow at Israel's Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies, said that if the TechSAR is to be launched by an Indian launch vehicle, it will be an exception to rules that have governed and should continue to guide Israeli military satellite launches. "But what's most important is the ability to deliver the payload into space successfully. So when considering that the reliability of the Israeli launcher is not so high, it is probably appropriate to launch from another vehicle," Inbar said.
The PSLV is a four-stage rocket that combines solid and liquid propellants. Because of TechSAR's small size relative to most PSLV payloads, it will launch on a version of the rocket that is not equipped with strap-on boosters, Israeli sources said.
Israeli government and industry sources insist that use of the Indian launcher will not involve the transfer to India of sensitive Israeli technology or know-how. "It's a significant step forward for strategic cooperation, but let's not get carried away. They're not going to be able to open up our satellite and learn our secrets," a defense official said.
I'm sure RoP will be outraged.
Another Zionist Conspiracy...
So did this satellite ever get launched? Everything in the article is 2006 news..
AFAIK, this launch was rescheduled for July 2007 onboard a modified PSLV.
India puts four satellites in space in preparation for moon mission
Jan 10, 2007 - 6:58:32 PM
http://www.rxpgnews.com/science-technology/India-puts-four-satellites-in-space-in-preparation-for-moon-mission-_11406.shtml
By IANS, [RxPG] Sriharikota -, Jan 10 - Indian space scientists Wednesday celebrated the 'textbook' launch of four satellites from an indigenous launch vehicle for the first time, but said a moon mission was still at least eight years away.
The Indian Space Research Organisation - Wednesday successfully sent into orbit four satellites with the help of the PSLV C7 -.
Exactly six months after the failure of the last launch attempt in July, two of the four satellites put into orbit were Indian-made ones and two were from Indonesia and Argentina.
Describing the launch as 'a textbook' one, ISRO chairperson Madhavan Nair said: 'It is a great day for the country. We have done it and we have done it precisely.'
The take off time of the 295-tonne PSLV was 9.23 a.m. Within 19 minutes, the carrier attained a height of 639 km.
Until now, Indian launch vehicles have only carried three satellites at a time into orbit. To accommodate four payloads, PSLV-C7 was fitted with a dual launch adopter, also for the first time in India.
The 44-meter tall PSLV-C7 carried the Cartosat-2, a 550-kg space capsule recovery experiment -, a 56-kg Indonesian satellite Lapan-Tubsat and a six-kg nano-satellite, Pehuensat-1, from Argentina.
The Cartosat separated perfectly and took to its destined polar synchronised orbit at 17-plus minutes after takeoff and the nano-satellite reached its station in 17 minutes.
The SRE-I - the most important satellite in this mission - went into orbit at 18 minutes and the Indonesian satellite went into orbit last, at about 19 minutes, 34 seconds after lift-off.
As many as 844 different systems and processes - had to be integrated before the lift-off.
The PSLV mission is said to be path breaking as India is testing out a recoverable capsule for the first time, ahead of its first moon mission.
Nair said the launch had 'captured back the country's confidence in our space mission'.
It would take 'at least eight years for a manned mission to the moon from India', Nair clarified.
Denying any pressure on ISRO to prove itself after the July 10 failure of its GSLV - mission, Nair said: 'We planned this mission two years ago.'
Following the GSLV disaster, 'we had to go through the entire quality control process', he said. 'We have gone through a process of calibration checks, review of processes and subsystems.
'The precision with which this mission went off... I challenge any country to perform such a perfect launch,' the ISRO chief said.
The re-entry and recovery phase is the most crucial part of any manned mission in outer space and the success of this experiment will be a signal from ISRO that India has started preparations for its journey to the moon.
India has never before actually tested re-entry and recovery, and will gain first hand knowledge of the various temperature changes and their effect on spacecraft.
ISRO will check out navigation, guidance and control technologies during the re-entry phase, scheduled two weeks from now.
The SRE has an aero-thermal protection system and ISRO is testing basic technology for protective outer jackets for satellites and vehicles, mission director N. Narayana Moorthy told reporters.
The SRE-1 also contains a spacecraft platform, a floating system, a parachute to control its drop, and micro-gravity payloads that will reduce its plunge speed. It will remain in a circular orbit for the first 10 days and is likely to be placed in an elliptical orbit on day 11.
The SRE-1 can remain in this elliptical orbit for as long as scientists need it to stay in space. The SRE will be reoriented in this orbit and then its de-boost rocket will be fired to make it re-enter the earth's atmosphere any time in the next two weeks after day 11.
Once it enters the earth's atmosphere, its parachute system opens and reduces its touchdown speed.
The SRE-1 is scheduled to plunge into the Bay of Bengal, about 140 km east of Sriharikota island, from where it was launched, on day 13. The Indian Navy will recover the experimental capsule, in coordination with ISRO.
The decision to test the re-entry and recovery technology was taken after 80 scientists from across the country gave their unanimous consent to sending a manned mission to space at a conference in Bangalore in November at the instance of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The PSLV-C7 has also carried to space India's second mapping satellite, the 680-kg Cartosat, which is the 12th remote sensing satellite the country is placing in orbit. It can provide scene-specific spot imagery.
The satellite has a panchromatic camera to provide imagery with a spatial resolution of less than one metre and a swathe of 9.6 km. The data available from it will be used for planning rural and urban development, officials said.
The satellite will also have high agility with the capability of steering across the track up to plus-45 degrees. The revisiting time of the satellite is four days and it will be active for five years.
The Indonesian Lapan-Tubsat is an earth observation satellite while Argentina's Pehuensat-1 is intended to gain experience for designing more complex miniatures for educational, technological and scientific purposes.
ISRO's last mission, the GSLV FO2 -, had failed on July 10.
On the space capsule recovery experiment -, the capsule that is scheduled to return to earth 13 days from now, Nair said: 'Bringing back a spacecraft is a technological challenge. We don't know many things about re-entry.'
He said that in 2008, with the Chandrayan-I mission, ISRO would place around the moon 'an instrumentation payload that will survey the surface of the moon. It will have X-ray and gamma-ray analysers and a deep space tracking network'.
ISRO plans an INSAT 4B launch in March from Ariane's South American station. Later in the year a GSLV launch is also on the cards.
Ping....this is good news. I really want to see Israel and India get together more often and solve the Islamic menace in both countries.
Thank-you. I didn't know. That is why I asked.
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