The new list drops three of the satellites Iran listed as recently as February, adds a satellite not mentioned in February and continues one satellite listed in February.
Asghar Ebrahim of the Iranian Space Agency announced last Tuesday that Iran would orbit two satellites this year. He said Fajr (Dawn) would be launched in September and Tolu (Sunrise) next February. He did not explain what had happened to the different list that the Space Agency announced just weeks ago in February.
Here are the satellite announcements the government has made in recent years.
In February 2010, the government said it would launch three satellites in the coming 2010-2011 Persian year—Navid (Herald), Tolu and Mesbah 2 (Lantern). None of the three was launched. In fact, Iran did not launch any satellite at all that year.
In February of this year, the regime said it would be launching four satellites in the 2011-12 Persian year—Rasad (Observer) soon after Now Ruz 2011, Navid this summer, Fajr later in the year, and Zafar (Victory) at some point. Navid was a holdover from the previous year, but the other three were new names to the list while Tolu and Mesbah 2, named the previous year, just disappeared without explanation.
Last week, Ebrahim named Fajr, which had been listed in February, and Tolu, which was named in 2010 but dropped from the list in February. He said nothing about Rasad, which should have been launched by now, or Navid, which was cited for two years running and has now disappeared from the list, or Zafar.
No one has given any explanation for why the list is constantly being shuffled like a deck of cards.
The Mehr news agency quoted Ebrahim also saying last week that the Mesbah 1 satellite, which was bought from an Italian firm several years ago, would be launched sometime in the next two years. But Italy has not yet allowed the satellite to be exported. And Mehr said Ebrahim announced the Mesbah 1 would be launched aboard a Russia Cosmos rocket. But the Russians refused to launch any more Iranian satellites about two years ago.
Iran has had two satellites in orbit. The Russians launched Sina, which was built by Russia, in October 2005. It is still in orbit, but Iran never talks about it. Sina circles the earth every 99 minutes. Iran launched its own domestically-made satellite, Omid (Hope), aboard an Iranian-made rocket in February 2009. Omid remained in orbit two months. The Islamic Republic has not launched any satellite since then.