Iran

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Iran

Qom
Credit: © Mark Wade

Iran, following a thirty year effort to acquire foreign technology however possible, launched its first satellite in 2009.

The last Shah of Iran had a dream of creating a 'Great Civilization' - an Iran that, by the year 2000, would exceed France in population, per capita income, and military potential. Part of this was creation of a nuclear deterrent, so that Iran could take its rightful place at the table of nations. The first contract was let in 1975 in a $30 billion program to build a network of 20 nuclear power stations around the country. More discretely, nascent nuclear research for other purposes was begun at locations in Tehran and Karaj.

Nuclear weapons would need delivery systems, and the most sophisticated American aerospace technology was graciously transferred. At the time of the 1979 revolution, Iranians had been trained in maintenance of sophisticated aircraft and helicopters at state-of-the-art depots built at Isfahan and Mehrabad. Ground had been broken for aircraft production factories outside of Isfahan, but no substantial training, tooling, or technology transfer had occurred. With a view to the future, the Shah's government reserved three internationally-allocated positions in geosynchronous orbit for Iran.

The new Islamic Republic abandoned most of these militaristic plans, but the harsh reality of the war with Iraq changed the mind of the government. The American aircraft and missiles were kept in operation, first with the assistance of Filipino maintenance specialists, then using predominately locally-trained staff. Iran decided to acquire its own ballistic missiles to match those of Iraq. Details remain murky, but from some combination of Syria, Libya, North Korea, Russia, and China, Iran acquired up to a dozen launchers and several hundred rockets of various models of R-17 Scud missiles. As many as 231 Iranian Scuds were fired at Baghdad during the 'War of the Cities' in 1988. The necessary tooling and raw stock to open a factory for manufacture of the Scud-B were said to have been purchased from North Korea in 1988, but without missiles being immediately produced. Other stories in the 1990's spoke of Russian assistance in transferring more advanced R-12 missile technology.

Whatever the real circumstances, by the end of the 1990's Iran had acquired the necessary technology, materials, and expertise to begin production of the North Korean Nodong-1 missile as the Shahab-3. This was followed by indigenous Iranian modifications and improvements, leading to test firing of an improved Shahab-3 in late 2004. This was said to be the basis of a space launcher, to be launched by Iranian New Year (No Ruz), March 21, 2005.

Iranian work on satellites was renewed in the mid-1990's in parallel with the development of the necessary rocketry. The Islamic Republic planned to share two of the geosynchronous slots reserved by the Shah 25 years earlier with others. However an Iranian satellite, dubbed Zohreh, would be placed in the third slot. Iranian intentions were thwarted when the United States blocked most countries from responding to Iran's tender calls for development of such a satellite.

To acquire satellite technology, it was decided that the Shahab-3-derived launch vehicle would be used to launch a completely indigenous Safir minimum satellite first. This would be followed by the Mesbah, developed in collaboration with Italy, as early as May 2005. A Mesbah-2 store-dump communications satellite would be deployed later. The constellation would be lofted in contracted launches from other countries. In January 2005, the long-blocked Zohreh geosynchronous satellite project finally went ahead with a contract signed with Russia.

People: Ansari. Engines: Nodong. Spacecraft: Fajr, Navid, Rasad, Sterkh, Mesbah-2, Safir Iran, Mesbah, Omid, Zohreh. Launch Vehicles: Emad, R-11, R-12, R-14, Oghab, Iran-130, Shahab 4, Shahab 3, Ashura, Safir, Sejjil. Launch Sites: Kermanshah, Mashad, Plesetsk, Khatami, Qom, Emamshahr, Semnan, Tabriz. Agency: IR, IRSA, AKO Polyot, Revolutionary Guards, Iran Telec.

1966 September 12 - .

Birth of Anousheh nee Raissyan Ansari - . Nation: Iran, USA. Related Persons: Ansari. Iranian-American engineer cosmonaut 2006. First female space tourist. First Iranian in space. 1 spaceflight, 10.9 days in space. Flew to orbit on Soyuz TMA-9 (2006)..