Israel has decided to launch its next spy satellite aboard India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rather than its own indigenous Shavit rocket, according to a report in Spacenews, an authoritative Washington-based weekly on global space business.
The report, quoting Israeli officials in Tel Aviv, said Israel's Ministry of Defence and state-owned satellite producer Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd are nearing conclusion with their Indian counterparts of all political and contractual agreements required for the planned October 2006 launch of the TechSAR.
TechSAR is Israel's first synthetic aperture radar imaging satellite.
"On the government-to-government level, a pre-existing bilateral accord on strategic cooperation (between India and Israel) already covers most aspects of the mission," the report said.
The estimated 260-kilogram TechSAR is slated as the exclusive payload aboard the PSLV, which will be launched from the Indian Space Research Organisation's Satish Dhawan Space Center, the report said.
If all agreements are finalised in the coming months, as expected, IAI will ship the satellite to the Indian launch site by summer, it said.
Contacted by phone, officials in the Indian Space Research Organisation in Bangalore told PTI they cannot comment anything at this stage for 'confidentiality' reasons.
India and Israel had signed an umbrella agreement for space collaboration a few months after the visit of Shimon Peres, the then deputy prime minister and minister for foreign affairs of Israel to ISRO on January 9, 2002.
Under a separate agreement signed on December 25, 2003, ISRO is expected to launch Israel's TAUVEX telescope that will image the sky in the Ultra-Violet spectrum. The date for this launch is not fixed yet.
The proposed launch of spy satellite is the second contract for ISRO from Israel. According to the Spacenews report the PSLV launch cost was estimated 'at no more than $15 million'.
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