Egypt satellite program struggling

Egypt is struggling to make progress in gaining intelligence satellite capabilities, an Israeli space security expert said. "People talk about the Iranians, but no one talks about Egypt's program, which includes more than one satellite," Tal Dekel, a research fellow at Tel Aviv University's Yuval Ne'eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday. Egypt is disguising its complex space initiative as scientific research, Dekel said. "They say the satellites are scientific. But usually, by this stage, most satellites are dual use. … As resolutions improve and technology progresses, satellites can become good enough for military use." Egypt launched its first satellite capable of photographing sites on earth in 2007 after 60 Egyptian scientists underwent training in Ukraine. The idea was to construct another satellite with 60 percent Egyptian-made components to launch in 2017, the paper said. In 2010 the program suffered a setback when communications with the first satellite were lost. Hundreds of scientists were fired, the paper said.