TEL AVIV -- Issues of workmanship and quality control appear to have caused the loss of Israel's newest spy satellite, the Ofeq-6, which crashed into the Mediterranean Sea during a failed attempt Sept. 6 to insert the spacecraft into low Earth orbit.

 

Although definitive findings of the failure investigation are not expected for several weeks, preliminary data points to a defective electronic component attached to the satellite that prevented the third stage of the locally produced Shavit launcher from igniting. Government-owned Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd. (IAI) of Lod is prime contractor for the Shavit launcher as well as the Ofeq series of spy satellites.

 

The incident marked the second time in less than six years that Israel has lost an expensive strategic intelligence satellite during launch and comes on the heels of an unsuccessful Aug. 26 attempt by the Israeli-developed Arrow-2 missile interceptor -- also produced by IAI -- to destroy a simulated Scud D missile in flight.

 

In a Sept. 8 interview, Doron Suslik, deputy vice president for corporate communications at IAI, insisted there was no connection between the Arrow and Shavit malfunctions. He said IAI's management is fully committed to determining the precise cause of the Ofeq-6 launch failure and drawing appropriate conclusions from the event.

 

In addition to the loss of nearly three years of development and production work costing up to $100 million, the failure dealt a severe blow to national prestige at a time when Israel and Iran are involved in an increasingly vitriolic face-off over the Islamic Republic's alleged program to deploy weapons of mass destruction.

 

Imagery from Ofeq-6 was intended to supplement coverage by the in-orbit Ofeq-5, which Israel's security establishment relies on to monitor movements of troops and missile launchers as well as activities associated with nuclear development efforts in Iran and other countries. Israel's Ministry of Defense (MoD) also has exclusive access to Mideast coverage provided by the commercial Eros-A remote sensing satellite, also built by IAI.

 

Ephraim Sneh, a former deputy defense minister who now heads the Israeli parliament's Defense Planning Subcommittee, decried the accident as a blow to Israel's intelligence-gathering capabilities, particularly at a time when Iran appears to be moving forward with nonconventional weapon development efforts. "The damage in terms of money, intelligence and prestige caused by this malfunction is simply unacceptable," Sneh said Sept. 8 through a spokesman.

 

If the failure investigation confirms suspicions that faulty workmanship and quality control rather than design flaws are to blame, defense and industry officials here say Israel's MoD will seek emergency funding to rush production and launch of a replacement satellite by the end of 2006.

"We're all waiting for the investigative committee to determine precisely what happened, because we don't want to repeat the same mistakes and have the new satellite fall again into the sea," retired major general Isaac Ben-Israel, former director of Israeli defense research and development, said in an interview.

The new satellite, which Israel's financial daily Globes dubbed the Ofeq-6.5 in its Sept. 7 editions, would duplicate the intended capabilities of Ofeq-6. Resolution associated with Israel's military imaging satellites remains classified, although sources here say the Ofeq-6 incrementally improves upon capabilities now provided by the Ofeq-5 launched in May 2002. According to government and industry sources, Ofeq-5 is capable of capturing panchromatic, or black and white, images sharp enough to distinguish objects less than 1 meter across.

 

Prior to the launch failure, Israel's multiyear satellite deployment plan called for completion of Ofeq-7 -- a generational improvement over Ofeq-6 -- by 2008. In parallel, Israel's MoD had planned to launch a synthetic aperture radar satellite, dubbed TechSAR, by 2006, along with a dedicated geostationary-orbiting communications satellite around 2007.

 

In interviews, defense and industry officials here said it is still unclear how replacing Ofeq-6 would affect the MoD's space launch roadmap. "At the present time, it is way too premature to assess the effects of the launch failure on future launch plans," MoD spokeswoman Rachel Naidek-Ashkenazi said.

Ben-Israel noted that Ofeq-7, part of the MoD's current program, represents "a quantum leap in capabilities" over the Ofeq-6, and therefore entails much more risk. He surmised that Ofeq-7 may have to be delayed to accommodate a replacement satellite launch. "There is some logic in saying that we'll have to modify the program and add -- between Ofeq-6 and Ofeq-7 -- something which will play the same role as Ofeq-6," Ben-Israel said.

 

Replacing an already developed satellite likely would cost between $50 million and $100 million since the MoD would not have to bear any nonrecurring development costs, Ben-Israel said. As for when IAI and Israel's defense establishment would be ready to launch an Ofeq-6 replacement, Ben-Israel said 2006 is certainly feasible, provided the MoD receives the requisite funding.

 

"Again, it's all a matter of funding. And whether MoD will receive replacement funding depends on the findings of the ongoing investigation," he said.

In a statement immediately following the launch, Israel's MoD attributed the failure to a malfunction in the third stage of the rocket. But subsequent analysis by government and industry experts appears to absolve the third stage motor, which is actually attached to the satellite rather than to the Shavit launcher itself. Instead, these experts blamed one of four electronic triggering devices responsible for igniting the motor.

Israel Military Industries of Ramat Hasharon builds the first two stages of the Shavit while Rafael Armament Development Authority Ltd. of Haifa produces the third stage motor.

Telemetry data indicates that the mission went as planned through separation of the satellite and the attached third-stage motor. At that point, however, the launcher's flight control mechanism recognized a malfunction and refused to allow ignition of the motor, sources here said.

 

Aby Har-Even, managing director of the Israel Space Agency and a former IAI program manager for the Shavit system, credited control system for assessing the malfunction and preventing ignition of the third stage.

 

"Listen, there's no getting around the fact that this was a disappointing failure. But if you look on the bright side, at least we know that the internal control mechanism was functioning properly. It sensed that conditions -- whether they pertained to velocity, pitch, attitude in space or other parameters -- were not nominal and refused to ignite the third stage. Otherwise, it could have reached a bad orbit or fallen in a place where it would be dangerous to fall, either on our own population centers or in enemy territory," Har-Even said in a Sept. 8 interview.

Meanwhile, executives at ImageSat International, the Tel Aviv-based owner and operator of the Eros series of commercial imaging satellites, said possible MoD plans to expedite launch of a replacement for Ofeq-6 will have no bearing on their own plans to launch Eros-B.

 

"The failed Ofeq-6 launch will not have an impact on the Eros-B production schedule," Menashe Broder, ImageSat chief executive officer, said in an interview. "Regardless of the Israeli MoD's plans to produce a replacement satellite, ImageSat has a firm commitment to our customers to launch Eros-B during the first quarter of 2006, and we and our manufacturers stand behind that date."

 

Eros-B, like the Eros-A satellite launched in December 2000, will ride a Russian Start-1 rocket to orbit rather than the Shavit used to loft the Israeli military's Ofeq satellites.

 

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