Iran set to test new satellite-carrier rocket
Iran will test a new satellite-carrier rocket in the near future, Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari announced on Sunday.
Jafari said that IRGC experts have managed to complete the project to manufacture the rocket, which had been initiated by Martyr Hassan Tehrani Moqaddam, the director of the IRGC Jihad Self-Sufficiency Organization, who was killed by two huge explosions on November 12, 2011 at an IRGC munitions depot near the town of Malard in Alborz Province.
He also said that the satellite-carrier rocket can carry 100 kilograms of solid fuel and can be used to send satellites into geostationary orbits.
A geostationary orbit is a circular orbit 35,786 kilometers above the Earth’s equator and following the direction of the Earth’s rotation. An object in such an orbit has an orbital period equal to the Earth’s rotational period, and thus appears motionless, at a fixed position in the sky, to ground observers. Communications satellites and weather satellites are often given geostationary orbits, so that the satellite antennas that communicate with them do not have to move to track them.
In March, Aerospace Industry Organization Director Mehdi Farahi announced that Iran planned to send satellites into geostationary orbits after the end of the country’s Fifth Development Plan.
Iran’s Fifth Five-Year Development Plan (2010-2015) is part of the 20-Year Outlook Plan (2005-2025), which is the country’s main blueprint for long-term sustainable growth.