Iran prepares for satellite launch in upcoming months, says minister

Iran to send at least two satellites into space by yearend

image from Los Angeles Times

Iran's telecommunications minister Issa Zare pour said on Sunday that the Islamic Republic is preparing to launch "at least two satellites" into space by late March. His statement has come just a month after a successful test of a launcher. 

The United States has in past repeatedly voiced its disapproval over such plans as it feels that such launches can boost Iran's ballistic missile technology, extending to the potential delivery of nuclear warheads. 

Iran maintains that it is not seeking nuclear weapons, it says that its satellites and rocket launches are for civil or defense purposes. 

"Nahid 1 and Nahid 2 satellites are being prepared," Zare pour was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRAN.

Nahid is the name given to a series of telecommunications satellites developed by the Iranian Space Research Center. According to Zare pour, "we will have launches by year's end," March 20 in the Persian calendar. 

image from am1380theanswer.com

In early November, Iranian state television announced the "successful suborbital launch of the satellite launcher named Ghaem-100". The Ghaem-100 rocket was manufactured by the aerospace organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Crops and it is the country's first three-stage solid-fuel satellite launcher, the channel added. 

Iran successfully put its first military satellite into orbit in April 2020, drawing a sharp rebuke from Washington.

In August this year, Russia launched another Iranian satellite, named Khayyam, on a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.