Israel Active

Israel’s Beresheet spacecraft selfie camera continues to click away, as the satellite performs its final and largest elliptical orbit around Earth ahead of planned lunar capture on April 4 and hopefully a moon landing on April 11. Beresheet has also now deployed its landing gear.

Israel’s Sonarax has developed a new connectivity protocol that transfers data using soundwaves. Sonarax states that it operates on any device that has a built-in speaker or microphone and its uses include mobile payments, authentication, IoT connectivity and indoor navigation

More information about the imaging and analysis platform of Israel’s Taranis, which is used by some 19,000 farmers in eight countries help prevent disease and pest infestation in crops. It protects about 20 million acres of fields in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Russia, United States and Ukraine.

I reported previously on Israel’s Wine Water Ltd that uses waste products from the wine industry to make O.Vine – infused spring water.  Israel’s Practical Innovations came up with the idea. They advise companies how to generate innovative products from previously discarded materials.

I reported briefly previously on Israel’s Skyline Robotics. Its automated cleaning system, called OZMO, uses computer vision and machine learning to clean windows at any height. It can clean (safely) a 40-storey building in 7 days - less than a third of the time that 3 human cleaners would take.

I reported previously that Israel’s Verbit provided a 4-hour turnaround for its transcription service.  , Verbit has now launched a pay per minute, real-time service that automatically transcribes speech instantly at a high accuracy rate.

As one Israeli datacenter accelerator (Mellanox) exits for $6.9 billion, one more appears. Israel’s Lightbits has developed software that can be installed on existing servers to connect flash storage with applications at high speed. Lightbits just raised $50 million of funds from Dell, Cisco and others.

I reported previously that there were six Israeli companies on Fast Company’s prestigious annual list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies (MIC) for 2019. There is now a seventh – Wisdo is a self-care platform that provides users with wisdom from those with similar experiences.

I reported previously that the radiation protection vest from Israel’s StemRad will be tested on NASA’s first Orion deep space mission.  The date for that has now been set for June 2020 and its destination will be the moon.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has unveiled 110 Einstein manuscript pages from a private collection - most on display for the first time. They include a hand-written appendix to Einstein’s Unified Theory, previously thought lost, and join the HUJ’s 80,000 item Einstein archive.