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www.lankanewspapers.com/news/2009/3/41204.html
India acquires high-tech Israeli spy satellite
20 March 2009

India has acquired a high-tech Israeli satellite that boasts of day and night viewing capability. It can keep a watch over India s hostile neighbours even when the landmass is covered by thick clouds.

This capability puts the satellite in the class of what are often called `spy satellites .

The Indian security forces have been seeking such capability for a long time. The need to procure one quickly was precipitated after the terrorist attacks on Mumbai by a Pakistani suicide squad on 26 November 2008. The attacks claimed over 180 innocent lives.

India s existing satellites get blinded at night as well as in the monsoon season.

The Israeli satellite will also provide India with the capability to track incoming hostile ballistic missiles.

The satellite, called a Radar Satellite (RISAT-2), will be launched in a few weeks by using the Indian rocket, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). The 300-kilogramme satellite is the first of its kind for India. It is in the process of being integrated with the Indian rocket at India s space port Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh on the east coast.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has been developing its own RadarSat at a cost of nearly four billion Indian rupees (about $80 million).

Since it was taking time, India went in for a hurried purchase from Israel. India s own RadarSat will launched later in 2009. That will give India a constellation of spy satellites.

Indo-Israeli relations in space are at a new high since January 2008, when India launched Israel s very own spy satellite called TecSAR.

TecSAR has a resolution of almost 10 centimetres, meaning it can read car number plates from the sky.

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India ready to launch radar imaging satellite built with Israeli inputs
www.chinaview.cn
2009-03-20

NEW DELHI, March 20 (Xinhua) -- India is likely to launch early next month a radar imaging satellite (RISAT), built with "substantial inputs" from the Israel aerospace industry, from Sriharikota spaceport in southern India, the semi-official Press Trust of India news agency reported Friday.

The report quoted an unnamed Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) official as saying Israel has supplied Synthetic Aperture Radar, which is in fact "heart" of the 1,780-kilogram remote sensing satellite.

The Israeli "inputs" are seen as a "return gesture" to New Delhi for launching an Israeli spacecraft Techsar on board India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle from Sriharikota spaceport last year, said the report.

"RISAT is likely to be launched in the first half of April. We are looking at April 5 or 6," the report quoted the official as saying.

Sriharikota is a barrier island off the coast of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh in India which houses India's only satellite launch center.

The Satish Dhawan Space Center is used by the ISRO to launch satellites using multi-stage rockets such as the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle and the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle.

Editor: Zhang Xiang