the Islamic Republic appears to have abandoned the three satellites it earlier said it would launch this year and is now talking about two entirely different satellites.
Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi announced Saturday that Iran would launch two satellites by Now Ruz. He named them as Rasad and Fajr. But he said not a word about the Tolu, Navid and Mesbah, of which Iran unveiled mockups last February while proclaiming they would be launched this Persian year.
The Rasad has been talked about before, but the Fajr is a new name.
Telecommunications Minister Reza Taqipur said in August that the Rasad (Observation) satellite had not yet been built and the launch would be postponed until some time before Now Ruz.
One month earlier, the minister had said the Rasad would be launched in the coming week. He did not explain what had gone wrong to delay the launch at such a late date other than to say, “The satellite is still being developed.”
Even more mysterious is the fact that back in February the minister had unveiled mockups of three satellites he said would be launched this year. The Rasad was not among the three. But the government in recent months has been talking only about the Rasad and not about the others—the Tolu (Dawn), Navid (Good News) and Mesbah-2 (Lantern).
The Fajr (Dawn) just got mentioned for the first time this week.
The fact that the telecommunications minister talked about one set of satellites while the defense minister is talking about an entirely different set prompted speculation the two ministries are brawling and have rival satellites they are interested in promoting.
Iran’s first domestically made satellite, Omid (Hope), was put into orbit in February 2009 aboard an Iranian-made rocket. It remained in orbit about two months. The government said it was equipped to take photos of the earth, but it never issued any photos from the satellite, although it previously issued photos taken by a Russian-built satellite, named Sina, launched by a Russian rocket on behalf of Iran.
Iran last year also launched a sounding rocket carrying some animals into space briefly. It said the rocket had landed safely with the animals. It released a photo of one animal strapped into the rocket before the flight, but issued no photos of the animal after the flight.
The Mesbah satellite was ordered from Carlo Gavazzi, an Italian satellite manufacturer, in February 2003. Russia said it would launch the Mesbah and the Sina satellites together in October 2005, but only the Sina was actually launched. The Russians later said the Mesbah did not arrive at the launch site in time. After that, the Mesbah just disappeared until Taqipur said in February that Iran would launch it.
Iran has described the Mesbah as a joint Italian-Iranian project and the Sina as a joint Russian-Iranian project. But the Italians and Russians said Iran just bought the satellites and did not have a role in the design.
The Omid, however, appears to have been entirely designed and built in Iran.
