Russia launches two Iranian satellites into orbit
5 November, 2024 Soyuz 2.1B launch vehicle.
2020. Photo credits: Russian Media This morning, Russia launched two Iranian national satellites, Kowsar and Khodkhod, into orbit.
This was announced by Ghazal Jalali, Iranian Ambassador to Moscow. Kowsar is designed for earth sensing and mapping, and Hodhod is a communications satellite. Although they are said to monitor agriculture, the environment, and communications in remote areas of Iran, both could potentially be used by the military and even for Earth observation at the request of the Russians.
The satellites were launched into a 500-kilometer orbit by a Soyuz 2.1B rocket from Russia's Vostochny Cosmodrome. Iranian private company Omid Faza developed the satellites, and this is the first significant achievement of Iran's non-state space sector. Urich, one of the authors of the Militarnyi blogs, discussed the preparations for the launch in April 2024, when the Iranian state-run Tasnim news agency reported that in the latest space cooperation between Russia and Iran, the latter had sent two locally produced satellites for future launch by a Russian spacecraft.
Prior to this, in March 2024, Iran announced that it had successfully launched Chamran 1, a domestically produced research satellite, into orbit at an altitude of 550 kilometers. It was launched directly from Iran and placed into orbit by an Iranian Qaem-100 launch vehicle.
The Chamran-1 satellite, which Iran launched into space on September 14, 2024. Iranian Space Agency via AP
Russia has previously deployed Iranian satellites into orbit in 2022 and February 2024.
At the time, U.S. officials expressed concern about space cooperation between Russia and Iran, fearing that it would only help the Kremlin in its war in Ukraine and Iran in tracking potential targets in Israel and the Middle East.
In January, Iran announced that it had simultaneously launched three satellites into orbit - almost a week after the launch of a research satellite by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iran's military space program has been developing very rapidly in recent years, given that it launched its first reconnaissance satellite in April 2020.