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Africa North

Egypt to launch first spy satellite

2007-01-15

In an effort to gain a foothold in space and gather intelligence on Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, Egypt plans to launch its first spy satellite on Tuesday from Kazakhstan.

The Egyptstat 1, which weighs just under 100 kilograms, will circle the earth at an altitude of 668 kilometers. Using a high-powered multi-spectrum telescopic camera, it will be capable of transmitting black-and-white, color and infrared images. The camera can spot objects on the ground as small as four meters across.

Egypt hopes to launch another satellite - called Desertstat - by the end of the year, currently under construction in Italy. The Egyptstat satellite, constructed in cooperation with the Yuzhnoye Company of Ukraine, will be launched on Tuesday from Kazakhstan, carried by a Dnepr missile, together with 12 light-weight Saudi Arabian satellites.

Tal Inbar, a senior research fellow at Israel's Fisher Institute for Air & Space Strategic Studies in Herzliya, said the Egyptstat launching marks a significant change in the balance of space capabilities in the Middle East. It will help Egypt to collect intelligence on Israel, Inbar added.

"This has regional significance," Inbar said. "Egypt is basically saying that they lead the region in satellite technology, since while Israel has advanced satellites in space, they do not have multi-spectrum capabilities."

In April, Israel launched the Eros B spy satellite, which can spot images on the ground as small as 70 centimeters across. It enhanced Israel's ability to follow developments at Iran's nuclear facilities.

Eros B, which will orbit the earth alongside its predecessor - Eros A, launched in 2000 - allows Israel, defense officials said, to gather information on Iran's nuclear program and long-range missiles, which are capable of reaching Israel.

In October 2005, Iran launched its first satellite - the Sina-1. Iran has announced plans to launch another satellite, the Mesbah, in the near future.

Posted by:anonymous5089

#9 Resolution is not everything when it comes to remote sensing. Resolution is often sacrificed for shorter return times by placing the satellite in higher orbits. The result is a satellite which can view the same place much more often with lower resolution - something that may be more desirable for a country that wants to monitor its own region frquently, rather than the entire globe infrequently. Multispectral is also good for detecting the material composition of objects - good for military monitoring.

Posted by: IanFichten 2007-01-15 20:24

#8 Let's use their satellite for target practice.

Posted by: JohnQC 2007-01-15 18:48

#7 Bet OP can watch 3D movies without the glasses.

Posted by: Shipman 2007-01-15 16:50

#6 Best SPOT resolution is 2.5 m.
The French military sats will of course have much better resolution.

The Indian Cartosat-2 launched last week has a public resolution of 80 cm.

Posted by: john 2007-01-15 15:40

#5 What a joke. The French SPOT satellite has a resolution of 30cm, and the imagery is available commercially. GeoNet and five other companies have satellites with equal capability, producing color imagery. The Indians, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, and French have radarsats. There are about 70 imaging satellites in orbit around the Earth right now, and almost a third of them are commercial. I'm also sure that the Israelis are fully capable of counter-satellite capabilities, both active and passive. This is nothing more than a prestige thing. BTW, the US KH-4 satellite imagery that President Clinton declassified back in 1997 had resolution of two to three feet, and most of it was taken in the 1960's. I probably looked at 600 miles of the crap.

Posted by: Old Patriot 2007-01-15 12:58

#4 So who paid for this miracle of modern imaging technology? Did it come out of our $2 billion in aid to Egypt? Gift from the Saudis? WTF?

Posted by: Alaska Paul 2007-01-15 11:51

#3 Four meter (about 13 ft) resolution on the Egyptian sat as compared to 70 cm (0.7 meter or about 2 ft) resolution on the Israeli satellite.

Multi-spectrum or not, the Egytian sat can barely spot a tank while the Israeli sat can see the front page of the newspaper you're holding (Rantburg Defender-Scimitar?).

Not a very good comparison.

Posted by: FOTSGreg 2007-01-15 10:49

#2 I would be willing to bet Rantbourg's spy satellite data (i.e. Google Earth) has superior resolution to this Egyptian gadget.

Posted by: Excalibur 2007-01-15 09:41

#1 while Israel has advanced satellites in space, they do not have multi-spectrum capabilities."

How typically Arab...

Israeli sats have advanced sensors. They have sold them to countries like India.
And the next Israeli satellite (TechSAR) which will go into orbit aboard an Indian PSLV rocket is a radar imager which can see through clouds, day and night.

Posted by: john 2007-01-15 06:09

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