Dubai: Iran appears to be preparing another satellite launch after twice failing this year to reach orbit.
Satellite images of the Imam Khomeini Space Centre in Iran’s Semnan province show increased activity at the site as heightened tensions persist between Washington and Tehran over its collapsing nuclear deal with world powers.
The US argues the Islamic Republic’s space program is helping it to develop ballistic missiles.
The satellite images of the space centre taken on August 9 show activity at the facility, said Fabian Hinz, a researcher at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.
Another image of a launch pad at the facility shows water that’s run off it and pooled, likely a sign of workers preparing the site for a launch, he said.
“The Imam Khomeini space launch centre is usually quite empty,” said Hinz. “Now we’ve seen pictures where you can see activities at this assembly centre and something happening at the [launch] pad.
“If you put both together it sounds very likely there’s something that’s going to happen.”
CNN first reported on the satellite images of the space centre, some 240 kilometres south-east of Iran’s capital, Tehran.
In July, Iran’s Information and Communications Technology Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi told the Associated Press that Tehran planned three more launches this year, two for satellites that do remote-sensing work and another that handles communications.
Read the article in The Sydney Morning Herald (AP).