Iran has said nothing about the loss of the Rasad satellite, which it had announced on launch would remain in orbit about two months.
Omid, the first satellite launched by Iran in 2009, stayed in orbit 85 days before decaying and falling into the atmosphere. The fact that the Rasad, launched June 15, survived just 21 days or only one-fourth as long suggests that Iran’s space program planners don’t have as much mastery as they claim.
Back in October 2005, the Russian space agency built and launched a much larger satellite named Sina for Iran. That satellite is still in orbit after almost six years.
The NASA website says Iran’s latest satellite, Rasad, fell out of orbit July 6. NASA made no announcement about Rasad’s end; the date simply appears in NASA’s voluminous records on thousands of satellites and was discovered by the Iran Times while making a check on the Rasad.
The Islamic Republic launched the Rasad to great fanfare June 15, but then turned surprisingly silent. Officials announced that Rasad had transmitted photos from orbit back to earth. But they never released any of the photos to the public. That hinted there may have been a problem with Rasad. Iran has issued photos taken from the Russian-made Sina satellite.
The Iran Times checked the NASA site after state television carried a report on Iran’s space program that never even mentioned the Rasad satellite.
The state television report said Iran’s next scheduled space launch would hurl a live monkey into space atop the Kavoshgar-5 sounding rocket “by the end of the summer” on September 21. The television report did not mention that this schedule is a one-month unexplained delay since the regime had been saying for months that the Kavoshgar (Explorer) would be launched by the end of the month of Mordad on August 22.
The Kavoshgar will not put the monkey into orbit. It will simply fire the monkey straight up into space inside a capsule, which will then drop back to earth beneath a parachute.
The now-dead Rasad satellite was smaller than the earlier Omid and was launched by the same small rocket used before, not the new and larger rocket Iran had been boasting about. This and the Rasad’s early death indicated the Iranian space program is not advancing with much speed.
This Rasad was sent into space June 15, two years and four months after Iran became the ninth nation to successfully orbit a satellite February 2, 2009. That satellite, Omid (Hope), was four times heavier than Rasad.
No one has explained the long delay before launching the second satellite—and then launching a much smaller one. The Soviet Union and United States launched their second satellites only weeks after orbiting their first satellites in the 1950s. The long delay suggests to many observers that Iran is having problems with its space program.
Western reactions have mainly focused on the military aspects of the two launches with little attention paid to the satellites themselves. The ability to put a satellite into orbit gives Iran the theoretical capability to plunk a nuclear weapon down anywhere on earth. However, the Safir (Ambassador) rocket that carried Rasad aloft is not big enough to carry a bomb. Iran has said the Safir has a diameter of only 1.25 meters (4.1 feet), and that the largest payload the Safir can carry is 50 kilos (110 pounds).
Iran did not say why it used the Safir rocket. For more than a year, Iran has been boasting about its new and much larger Simorgh rocket. Iran has shown off a mockup of the Simorgh, but it has never announced any test flights, suggesting the Simorgh may not yet be ready for prime time.
The government announced the launches of Omid and Rasad only after they had already entered orbit. Iran has not yet announced launches in advance, suggesting it doesn’t feel confident its equipment will work. The huge delay between Iran’s first and second satellite launches might also mean it has made some attempts in between that failed. Iran has announced many schedules for satellite launches. Some of the satellite names mentioned in the schedules have just disappeared from later announced schedules.
Rasad had solar panels to provide it with power, a step forward from the battery power used on Iran’s first satellite. Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi also boasted that the Rasad possessed all the characteristics of a large satellite, despite its size, which categorizes it as a micro-satellite. The term micro-satellite is commonly applied to satellites weighing 10 to 100 kilos.
However, the Rasad had very limited capabilities. Iran never described the resolution of the camera on board, but it gave the resolution of another camera being prepared for orbiting. And that camera will provide photos only 1/800th as detailed as satellite photos that are available commercially.
Hossain Bolandi showed off the Navid satellite he is working on. It weighs 50 kilos, triple the size of the Rasad. Bolandi said the camera on the Navid would be able to see objects more than 400 meters across or the size of four football fields. But commercial satellites like the GeoEye1 now is service show objects only 50 centimeters (20 inches) across and US spy satellites are understood to discern objects as small as 1 centimeter (a half inch) in size.
Iran’s Space Agency chief, Hamid Fazeli, announced in June that the next satellite will be lofted in Mehr (September-October). It will be named Fajr (Dawn) and is being built by the Defense Ministry.
Next February, he said, the Navid (Herald) satellite produced by the Science and Industry University is to be orbited during the celebration of the anniversary of the revolution.
Whether that schedule will be adhered to is another matter.
The Rasad was first named as a planned satellite in an announcement July 7, 2010, when officials said it would be launched in the last week of August 2010. But on August 16, 2010, officials said it would be orbited before Now Ruz 2011. Last February 7, officials said it would be launched before Now Ruz 2012, which it was.
There are currently 3,000 satellites orbiting the earth. New satellites are currently launched 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.