Israel's Eros B Imaging Satellite Reaches Orbit

摘要

Israel took a significant step to-ward bolstering its space-based reconnaissance capabilities April 25 with the successful launch of the Eros B imaging satellite aboard a Russian Start-1 rocket. Eros B is owned by ImageSat International, a consortium with close ties to the Israeli government — its biggest customer. The successful launch brings to three the number of satellites available to the Israeli Ministry of Defense — including the government-owned Ofeq-5 and ImageSat's Eros B — and takes some of the sting out of the September 2004 loss of the Ofeq-6 satellite, which was destroyed in a failure of Israel's domestically built Shavit rocket.