The Navid satellite stayed up only three-quarters as long as Iran’s first satellite, which lasted 82 days, but three times as long as its second satellite, which survived just 21 days.
According to NASA’s tracking system, Navid “decayed,” to use the space terminology, and fell out of orbit to its death on April 2 or three weeks ago. The Islamic Republic has remained silent about the satellite’s death, as it avoided announcing the death of the second satellite until after the Iran Times reported on it.
The fact that both the second and third satellites have survived for shorter periods than the first suggests that Iranian launch technicians have not mastered the technology to place satellites in optimum orbits.
It is worth noting that the first Iranian-owned satellite, Sina, was lofted by the Russians for Iran October 27, 2005—and it is still in orbit after 6 1/2 years.
Navid (Herald) was launched February 3, using the same Safir rocket used for Iran’s previous two satellites and not the new and much more powerful Simorgh rocket Iran earlier said it would be using. That suggests a problem with Simorgh.
Oddly, the regime did not release any film of the launch, and state television and newspapers used photos from previous launches.
Iran’s last previous space launch was last September. It was not announced. In October, Deputy Science Minister Mo-hammad Mehdinejad-Nuri acknowledged circumspectly that it had failed. He said a Kavoshgar rocket was launched with a monkey on board but “the launch was not publicized as all of its anticipated objectives were not accomplished.” In other words, the monkey did not survive.
The government said Navid was equipped with cameras to take pictures of the earth. It said photos were sent back to five ground stations in Iran. However, no photos have yet been released. Pictures from the previous satellites were not released either. Only photos from the Sina satellite built and lofted by Russia have been released.
Hamid Fazeli, the head of the Space Agency, said Navid would collect weather data and monitor for natural disasters. He said the satellite would remain in orbit about three months, so at 60 days it fell far short of the goal for it.
With regard to Iran’s two previous satellites, Omid (Hope) was orbited February 3, 2009, and circled the earth 82 days before its orbit decayed and it fell into the atmosphere and burned up. Rasad (Observer) was launched June 15, 2011. That was two years and four months after the first launch, a long time span with no explanation. (The United States and the Soviet Union each launched their second satellites just weeks after their firsts.)
Navid was the heaviest of the three. Omid weighed in at 27 kilos (59 pounds) and Rasad at 15 kilos (33 pounds), while Navid weighed 50 kilos (110 pounds). All three are listed as microsatellites, which are those satellites weighing from 10 to 100 kilos.
Last June, Fazeli said Navid would be orbited in February. While most announcements of launch dates have proven overly optimistic and been put off repeatedly, the launch date for Navid was met. On the Navid launch, President Ahmadi-nejad said two more satellites would be launched in this Persian year, Fajr (Dawn) and Tolou (Sunrise).
Navid was produced by Elm o Sanat, the Science and Technology University, and was intentionally launched during the celebration of the anniversary of the revolution and on the third anniversary of Iran’s first satellite launch.
The 72-foot Safir rocket used to loft all of Iran’s satellites is a two-stage rocket based on the Shahab-3 military booster. It is thought to have the capacity to carry a 110-pound satellite at max, so the Navid would be at Safir’s end capability.
There are currently about 3,000 satellites in orbit and new satellites are added at the rate of two a week.
Iran is only the ninth country to put a satellite into orbit on board its own rocket. The others are the Soviet Union in 1957, the United States in 1958, France in 1965, Japan in 1970, China in 1970, Britain in 1971, India in 1980 and Israel in 1988.