its plans to orbit the satellite Fajr, Hamid Fazeli, the head of the national space agency, announced Monday.
In June, Fazeli said the monkey would be launched in August. In July, he said the launch would occur in September. In August, he said the launch was imminent. Monday he said no date could be set.
“One cannot give a set date for this project,” he said, “and as soon as our nation’s scientists declare their readiness, it will be announced.”
He did not explain what had delayed the launch, but clearly the program was facing problems.
However, he denied that. “Our scientists are exerting continuous efforts on this project.… Our colleagues are busy with empirical studies and with sub-system testing of this project, so it is a success,” he told state television.
As for the satellite Fajr (Dawn), in June Fazeli said it would be lofted in Mehr (September-October). Being built by the Defense Ministry, it will become Iran’s third satellite. But on Monday, Fazeli said it would be delayed five months and be launched shortly before Now Ruz. He did not explain what necessitated the delay.
The monkey is to be launched aboard Iran’s Kavoshgar rocket. It will not go into orbit. The Kavoshgar is just a “sounding” rocket, one that is fired straight up into space and which then falls back down after exhausting its fuel.
Fazeli has said the monkey would be fired to an altitude of 120 kilometers (75 miles) as the first step in Iranian plans to put a human into orbit by 2019. So far, only three countries have put humans into orbit—Russia, China and the United States. But one private US firm has already put men into space suborbitally twice—which is what Iran is proposing to do with its monkey.
Iran has fired three Kavosh-gars previously. After the first flight, the space agency showed photos of the Kavoshgar capsule successfully parachuted back to earth. It was dented but intact.
The government has not, however, shown any photos of returned capsules from the second and third Kavoshgars. Kavoshgar-3 was launched in 2010 carrying a rat, turtles and worms. They were filmed being placed into the capsule, but the government never showed them after the flight, leading to suspicions the flight did not work as planned.
There has been speculation that Kavoshgar-4, carrying its monkey, was actually launched in September in secret, but that it failed and Fazeli just decided to pretend the launch had been delayed.
The Islamic Republic has announced numerous plans to launch numerous rockets and satellites. Few of the announced launches have occurred as scheduled. No launch has ever been broadcast live and actual launches are only announced to the public after the fact. No failure has ever been announced.
Iran has placed two satellites in orbit. Omid was orbited February 2, 2009, and circled the earth almost three months before its orbit decayed and it fell into the atmosphere and burned up. Navid was launched June 15 of this year. 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.) The second Iranian satellite weighed only one-fourth as much as the first. It stayed in orbit a mere three weeks, suggesting the ability to guide the launching rocket was poor. And the same rocket was used to launch the second satellite, not the much larger Simorgh that the regime has been boasting it has developed.
Next February, Fazeli said in June, 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 now-decayed 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.