TEHRAN – Iran has developed a new satellite ready to be launched, Fars quoted the director of the Iranian Space Research Center (ISRC) as saying on Sunday.

Hadi Rezaee said his center is also making final preparations on two others.
 
He said Iran will keep developing its space program in defiance of restrictions imposed by the U.S.

Rezaee said Iranian researchers have succeeded to prepare the satellites while no country is ready to sell equipment or share technology with Iran due to the sanctions.

The restrictions created by the U.S. economic terrorism have brought about a certain morale among Iranian researchers to work hard to promote science and technology, he remarked.

He also said the researchers’ efforts to train experts in various fields have resulted in the creation of jobs.

Based on national macro-plans, the ISRC has drawn a roadmap for developing sentinel and telecommunications satellites and stratosphere platforms, he noted.

Rezaee added that the body is now cooperating with 11 universities and over 300 knowledge-based and private sector companies.

Earlier this month, Head of the Iranian Space Agency (ISA) Morteza Barari announced that Iran was registering 5 orbit points at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

Each year, Iran registers five orbit points which will be left to use by other countries if not used by Iran in their specific time limit, Barari said on July 15.

Iran launched its first locally-built satellite, Omid (Hope), in 2009. The country also sent its first bio-capsule containing living creatures into space in February 2010, using a Kavoshgar-3 (Explorer-3) carrier.

In February 2015, the Islamic Republic placed its domestically-made Fajr (Dawn) satellite into orbit, which is capable of taking and transmitting high-quality photos to stations on Earth.

In January 2019, the domestically-built Payam (Message) satellite was launched into space with the aim to collect environmental information; however, technical problems that occurred during the final stage of the launch prevented the spacecraft from reaching orbit.

SP/PA