Tehran: Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard says it has launched a military satellite into orbit amid wider tensions with the United States, describing it as a successful launch after months of failures.
On its official website, the Guard said the satellite successfully reached orbit at 425 kilometres above the Earth’s surface. It called it the first military satellite ever launched by Tehran.
The two-stage launch took off from the Central Desert, the Guard said, without elaborating or saying when exactly. The paramilitary force said it used a Ghased, or “messenger” satellite carrier to put the device into space, a previously unheard-of system.
There was no immediate independent confirmation of the launch of the satellite, which the Guard called Noor, or light. The US State and Defence departments, which contend that such launches advance Iran’s ballistic missile program, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The news comes amid tensions between Tehran and Washington over its collapsing nuclear deal and after a US drone strike in Iraq killed Guard General Qassem Soleimani in January.
Iran has suffered several failed satellite launches in recent months. The latest came in February, when it failed to put its Zafar 1 communications satellite into orbit.
That came after two failed launches of the Payam and Doosti satellites last year, as well as a launchpad rocket explosion in August. A separate fire at the Imam Khomeini Space Centre in February 2019 also killed three researchers, authorities said at the time.
Read the report in The Sydney Morning Herald (AP).