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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Israel to launch Tauvex aboard India's GSAT-4 |
| 2006-06-19 |
| Jerusalem, June 19 (PTI): Israel is likely to launch its 18.2 million USD-worth TauvexII scientific telescope for astronomical research of the galaxies aboard India's GSAT-4 satellite by mid next year. "A delegation from ISRO recently visited Israel to review the progress in the project, including a short visit by its Chairman, and found that the progress is smooth and the telescope is close to integration stage", Director of Israel Space Agency (ISA), Zvi Kaplan said. "A crew from El-op, which is supplying the camera and scientists from the Tel Aviv University will meet next month to start the process of integration and to check other technical aspects in the context of the whole system", Kaplan said. The telescope was designed to be launched aboard a Russian launcher at a cost of 15 million USD and another 3.2 million USD is being spent to adopt it to the Indian launcher, sources at the ISA said. The launch is a part of the agreement signed between ISA and ISRO for scientific cooperation between the two countries in the field of astronomy in the Ultra-Violet spectrum in December 2003 during the visit of then Science and Technology minister Eliezer Sandberg to India. The TAUVEX II electro-optical space camera is for scientific exploration and comprises three telescopes for observation in the "ultra-violet" spectrum for astronomical research of the galaxies. Research activities based on imagery received from the camera will be performed jointly by academic institutions in both India and Israel. About Tauvex TAUVEX is an Indo-Israeli Ultraviolet Imaging Experiment that will image large parts of the sky in the wavelength region between 1400 and 3200 Ã…. The instrument consists of three co-aligned 20-cm UV imaging telescopes with a choice of filters for each telescope. Each telescope has a field of view of about 54' and a spatial resolution of about 6" to 10", depending on the wavelength. TAUVEX will be launched into a geostationary orbit as part of ISRO's GSAT-4 mission in 2006. The hardware is being built at El-Op (Israel) while the software is being developed at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. The scientific data will be shared equally by the two countries. |
| Posted by:john |
| #2 It's amazing how good they are at flying under the radar. As much publicity as India's achievements have been getting lately, it seems there is plenty more achievements that few outside of india know about. Wonder how long it will be before the full impact of India will be realized by the world. |
| Posted by: sludge 2006-06-19 13:06 |
| #1 India has a rather sophisticated space program, considering you've never heard of it. |
| Posted by: Mike 2006-06-19 11:16 |