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An Iranian communications satellite was sent into orbit aboard a Russian rocket on Friday, a launch that highlighted\u00a0strong ties between the two countries.<\/p>\n
The Soyuz rocket lifted off as scheduled from Vostochny launchpad in far eastern Russia.<\/p>\n
It carried two Russian Ionosphere-M Earth observation satellites, along with Iran’s Nahid-2 satellite and 17 smaller Russian satellites, and put them into designated orbits.<\/p>\n
“The operational life of the NAHID-2 satellite is planned for two years,” said Hassan Salariyeh, head of the Iranian Space Agency. <\/p>\n
“Typically, satellites have a lifetime of five years at low altitude (LEO) and 10 years at high altitude (GEO).” <\/p>\n
Russia, which signed a \u201cstrategic partnership\u201d treaty with Iran in January, strongly condemned the Israeli and US strikes on Iran last month.<\/p>\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that Moscow could help\u00a0negotiate a settlement\u00a0that could allow Tehran to pursue a peaceful atomic programme while assuaging Israeli security concerns.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Putin has emphasised that Tehran hasn\u2019t asked Moscow for military assistance and noted that the partnership treaty doesn\u2019t envision such aid.<\/p>\n
Russia has maintained a delicate\u00a0balancing act in the Middle East for decades, trying to maintain warm relations with Israel even as it developed strong economic and military ties with Iran.<\/p>\n
Friday’s launch was announced before\u00a0nuclear talks\u00a0between Iran and Britain, France, and Germany began in Istanbul and comes after Tehran tested one of its satellite-carrying rockets with a suborbital flight on Monday.<\/p>\n
Iran-Russia space cooperation<\/p>\n
The launch of Nahid 2 was a continuation of Iran and Russia’s cooperation on ventures into space. <\/p>\n
In November, Russia\u00a0launched a pair of Iranian satellites named Kowsar and Hodhod, the first launched on behalf of the country\u2019s private sector.<\/p>\n
It followed two previous Russian launches of Iranian satellites in 2022 and 2024.<\/p>\n
The Nahid series of satellites (1 and 2) was designed and built by the Iranian Space Agency for telecommunication missions at the Iranian Space Research Institute.<\/p>\n
According to the Iranian space agency, the satellite provides the power it needs using solar arrays on the hull. <\/p>\n
Development of the Nahid 2 continued, despite delays in the launch of the Nahid 1 satellite due to technical problems and international coordination. To complement the performance of the NAHID-1 satellite, four stations were built in different parts of the country.<\/p>\n
NAHID-1 was originally supposed to be deployed with the Sefir-1 satellite in the summer of 2018 to orbit at 250 to 375 km, but a technical incident before the launch of the Ambassador caused the mission to be cancelled.<\/p>\n
The Iranian Space Agency has announced that plans for the Nahid 3 project, which it describes as a more advanced, are under way. <\/p>\n
Iran has been sending satellites to orbit in what Western analysts see as efforts to boost its aerospace programme.<\/p>\n
These projects are in line with Iran’s plans for self-sufficiency in space technology and the development of commercial and research applications, according to the Iranian Space Agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ADVERTISEMENT An Iranian communications satellite was sent into orbit aboard a Russian rocket on Friday, a launch that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[774,7466,332,21334,70,413,108548,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-291778","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-iran","9":"tag-missile","10":"tag-russia","11":"tag-satellite","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-space","14":"tag-space-mission","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114916401081198922","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}