Iran Developing Longer-Range Rocket

http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday announced his country was developing a multistage rocket capable of flying roughly 620 miles to place a satellite in orbit, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, July 8).

"The country's scientists are working on a three-stage rocket that will take us to 1,000 kilometers," state media quoted Ahmadinejad as saying. "Last time, we sent a satellite to 250 kilometers. ... Next year it will be sent to 700 kilometers, and the year after that to 1,000 kilometers."

Iran's program for launching satellites has drawn concerns from the global community, as technology used to place orbiters into space can also be applied to ballistic missiles. Worries on Tehran's missile capabilities are twinned with suspicions that it is operating a nuclear-weapon drive in the guise of a civilian program. Iran says its atomic activities have no military component (see related GSN story, today).

The Middle Eastern state put its first indigenously produced satellite into orbit in February 2009.

"The rocket that we used for the first satellite had an engine thrust of 32 [metric] tons at the time of launch, but the rocket that we are building will have the thrust of 120 or 140 [metric] tons," the Iranian president said.

Iran also intends to fire a new orbiter into space in the "near future," he said, describing the craft as an "experimental telecommunication satellite" with "a lifetime of one year." Iranian Communications Minister Reza Taghipour last month said the Middle Eastern nation would fire its Rasad 1 satellite into space in late August.

Iran intends "within five or six years" to launch telecommunication satellites into space at orbits of around 22,000 miles, where they can maintain fixed positions over specific segments of the earth, Ahmadinejad noted (Agence France-Presse/Google News, Aug. 5).

He said Iran would place its first astronauts in space by 2017, two years sooner than he stated previously, RIA Novosti reported (see GSN, July 26).

"This project is another step towards the implementation of the Iranian Space Agency's program on the construction and launch of a spacecraft into (geostationary) orbit, which is more than 35,000 kilometers from Earth," he said, according to state media (RIA Novosti, Aug. 5).