The Israeli intelligence satellites – a success story

The Israeli intelligence satellites – a success story

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opsatBy ARIE EGOZI

More countries want eyes up in the skies. This explains the growing demand for intelligence satellites . It also explains the Israeli success in this business: with an impressive legacy of satellites deployed, many of which are operational today, IAI Space division is positioned as a leading supplier of intelligence gathering satellites used by military, governments agencies and commercial service providers, as well as communications satellites, operated by commercial providers.

IAI has made all the Offeq series spy satellites and the development of new technologies continues.

The flagship of IAI’s high-resolution imaging satellite is the highly advanced yet compact Optsat3000 high resolution imaging satellite platform. At a loaded weight of only 385 kg this satellite packs the performance that other satellites could deliver at four, or even eight times its weight. Optsat3000 provides panchromatic imaging resolution of 0.50 meters from an altitude of 600 km (1 meter resolution for color imaging from the same altitude). Its highly agile pointing capability means it can achieve target revisit cycles much faster than more expensive platforms.

The compactness and lightweight of Optsat3000 are attributed to the advanced payload, that offers both high resolution panchromatic and multispectral (color) imaging at the same time, delivered by two separate detector matrixes using a common optical system, thus ensuring the two imagers are looking at the same target at all times.

IAI is also working on a new generations of reconnaissance satellites. These satellites support both electro-optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) payloads.

They provide very high day and night resolution images in all weather conditions.
With a low weight of about 400kg, they can achieve extremely high mechanical agility. Combining high maneuverability with their small size, the satellites deliver sub-metric resolution images from Low Earth Orbit of about 600 km in a mosaic form. Operating in polar or inclined orbits, the satellites use has an agile pointing capability enabling the coverage of many targets per visit, gaining maximum utilization of each orbit.

The attractive performance-cost-weight ratio enables launching such satellites as secondary payloads, thus reducing launch cost and improving response time.