10 Facts About Shavit 2

Shavit 2 is a small lift launch vehicle produced by Israel from 1982 onwards, to launch satellites into low Earth orbit.

Shavit 2 project is believed to have been an offshoot development, resulting from Israel's Jericho nuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missile program.

Shavit 2 rockets are launched from Palmachim Airbase by the Israel Space Agency into highly retrograde orbits over the Mediterranean Sea to prevent debris coming down in populated areas and to avoid flying over nations hostile to Israel to the east; this results in a lower payload-to-orbit than east-directed launches would allow.

An earlier unrelated project called Shavit 2 was the first Israeli sounding rocket, launched on 5 July 1961 for meteorological research.

Shavit 2 was first launched in 1988 and because of its geographic location and hostile relations with surrounding countries, Israel had to launch it to the west, over the Mediterranean Sea, in order to avoid flying over those hostile territories to its east.

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Shavit 2 has been launched 11 times, placing the payload into orbit 9 times.

However, the Shavit 2 is launched westward over the Mediterranean Sea to avoid flying and dropping spent rocket stages over populated areas in Israel and neighboring Arab countries.

The Shavit 2 is said to be made available for commercial launches in the near future.

September 2004 failure of the Shavit 2 resulted in the destruction of the US$100 million Ofeq 6 spy satellite.

Jericho II missile-Shavit 2 SLV was license produced in the Republic of South Africa as the RSA series of space launch vehicles and ballistic missiles.