Cosmic Penguin
Geek Penguin in GTO
Spaceflight quiz question: how many nations in the world have the ability to throw something into space by themselves? 
Of course there's the "big 6" - the Americans, the Russians, the French (well that's ambiguous nowadays since other Europe nations share the workload - but isn't Europe almost one nation anyway? Well there is, ahem was the British, but you all know what happened.... :rofl, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Indians - all of which you guys have seen lots.
Then there are the much maligned Iranians and North Koreans - which I have covered their recent launches too (although it seems that both of them have seen decreased activity on the spaceflight arena recently).
And who else? Ah yes, I have forgotten one - but that's because they haven't done one for the past few years. But finally I got the chance to report on the secretive Israelis doing a satellite launch!
For the first time in almost 4 years Israel has launched a spysat into orbit. On April 9 at around 19:00 UTC, a Shavit rocket (comet in Hebrew) launched Ofeq-10 (Horizon-10 in Hebrew), their newest radar reconnaissance satellite, into a reported 600 km low Earth orbit, from the Palmachim AFB just outside Tel Aviv. This is their first satellite launch since June 22, 2010.
The Shavit rocket is a 3-stage all-solid rocket jointly developed by Israel and South Africa in the 1980s (although South Africa dropped out in the early 1990s after its major shake-up), and is apparently sharing components with the Jericho ICBM. Due to Israel's position, they have to launch all satellites out west on the Mediterranean, which means all of their spysats ends up in retrograde orbits with inclinations somewhere around 140 degrees. This one is no exception, although in this case it may actually offer an advantage of getting higher resolution via the Doppler effect.
The satellite is probably similar to an earlier one named TecSAR developed jointly with (and launched by) the Indians, offering sub-meter resolution with only a 300 kg satellite - typical of the advanced weapons technology of the Israelis.
P.S. There are actually 2 Orbiter add-ons for the Israel space program (!): http://www.orbithangar.com/download.php?ID=3185 and [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4808"]http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4808[/ame]
Of course there's the "big 6" - the Americans, the Russians, the French (well that's ambiguous nowadays since other Europe nations share the workload - but isn't Europe almost one nation anyway? Well there is, ahem was the British, but you all know what happened.... :rofl
, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Indians - all of which you guys have seen lots.Then there are the much maligned Iranians and North Koreans - which I have covered their recent launches too (although it seems that both of them have seen decreased activity on the spaceflight arena recently).
And who else? Ah yes, I have forgotten one - but that's because they haven't done one for the past few years. But finally I got the chance to report on the secretive Israelis doing a satellite launch!
For the first time in almost 4 years Israel has launched a spysat into orbit. On April 9 at around 19:00 UTC, a Shavit rocket (comet in Hebrew) launched Ofeq-10 (Horizon-10 in Hebrew), their newest radar reconnaissance satellite, into a reported 600 km low Earth orbit, from the Palmachim AFB just outside Tel Aviv. This is their first satellite launch since June 22, 2010.
The Shavit rocket is a 3-stage all-solid rocket jointly developed by Israel and South Africa in the 1980s (although South Africa dropped out in the early 1990s after its major shake-up), and is apparently sharing components with the Jericho ICBM. Due to Israel's position, they have to launch all satellites out west on the Mediterranean, which means all of their spysats ends up in retrograde orbits with inclinations somewhere around 140 degrees. This one is no exception, although in this case it may actually offer an advantage of getting higher resolution via the Doppler effect.
The satellite is probably similar to an earlier one named TecSAR developed jointly with (and launched by) the Indians, offering sub-meter resolution with only a 300 kg satellite - typical of the advanced weapons technology of the Israelis.
P.S. There are actually 2 Orbiter add-ons for the Israel space program (!): http://www.orbithangar.com/download.php?ID=3185 and [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4808"]http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4808[/ame]
