New Israeli Satellite Honors Fallen Soldier, Massacre Victims

The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and state-owned defense contractor Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) are collaborating on a project to build a communications satellite in honor of a fallen Israel Defense Forces officer who was set to begin studying at the university. 

Captain (res.) Denis Krokhmalov Veksler, fell in battle in Gaza in January at the age of 32. He was an officer in the elite Yahalom (Diamond) engineering unit of the IDF Combat Engineering Corps.

Veksler, a respected athlete who immigrated to Israel at the age of 17, had been injured during training for a triathlon following his mandatory military service, but was determined to continue to serve as a reserve soldier. 

He had been set to begin studying aerospace engineering at the Technion, a public research university based in Haifa. 

The satellite – named NOVA-SAT in honor of the victims of the massacre at the Nova dance party on October 7 – is the final project of students at the Technion’s Faculty of Aerospace Engineering.

The project is being led by Dr. Hillel Rubinstein from IAI, and Dr. Oded Golan, the faculty’s academic supervisor of student projects. 

The satellite will perform measurements using the GALI (Gamma-ray Burst Localizing Instrument) detector developed at the Technion’s Faculty of Physics. 

This device is designed to detect bursts of gamma radiation, which is produced by supernovae, mergers of neutron star pairs and the explosion of stars at the end of their lives. 

These astronomical events are hard to identify, and there is a worldwide effort to develop innovative detectors to locate them.