October 10-14
Iran has not launched a satellite in more than 2 1/2 years,
but last week it issued yet another in an ever-changing list of planned launches.
It last issued a list in May, when Hamid Fazeli, the head of Iran’s space program, said Iran was planning to launch six named satellites by next Now Ruz. On Saturday, Fazeli issued a new list, naming five satellites to be lofted “soon.”
Of the six named in May, three are on the new list and three have disappeared. The new list includes the Nahid satellite, which Fazeli said in early 2013 would be launched in early 2013. But Nahid wasn’t launched then and was dropped from the list Fazeli announced last May, but has been resurrected on the list announced Saturday. The fifth satellite on Fazeli’s new list is the Pars, which he has never listed before.
Typical of the disorder on the lists is the Fajr, which Fazeli said in January 2013 would be launched within nine days. It wasn’t. In February 2013, he said Fajr would be launched within one month. It wasn’t. Last May, he said it would be launched by next Now Ruz. But in the new list announced Saturday, it has just disappeared.
No one has explained how a satellite that was ready for launch in just nine days a year and a half ago has now been dropped entirely from the launch list.
Fazeli also did not explain why not a single satellite listed on any of the schedules he has announced has been lofted since the Navid was put into orbit February 3, 2012.
The accompanying table shows the launch schedule announced by Fazeli in January 2013 and the completely revised schedule he announced just three weeks later plus the further revised lists issued last May and last week.
The Moscow daily Izvestia reported last May that Iran had signed a deal with Moscow for Russia to build and launch Iranian satellites. That agreement, which suggests Iran’s space program is in disorder, did not come up during Fazeli’s meeting with reporters Saturday.
Last May, Fazeli hinted that the problem was with Iran’s rockets. He said, “All of our satellites are ready. They will be launched into space whenever arrangements are made.”
Fazeli has said that the Zafar satellite, one of three to be consistently on all the launch lists, will be sent in geostationary orbit, which by definition is an altitude of 36,000 kilometers (22,320 miles), above the earth. But none of Iran’s known satellite launchers rockets has the capability to reach even 5 percent of that altitude.
That would suggest Russia would have to launch it. But Fazeli said Saturday that Zafar would be launched “with powerful, locally-designed carriers in the near future.”
In addition, Fazeli said Iran now plans to launch a man into space by 2018, a year earlier than President Mahmud Ahmadi-nejad had set as a target date.