Iran said it has launched its first home-built satellite into orbit, in a move likely to further alarm an international community already at odds with Tehran over its controversial nuclear drive."Dear Iranians, your children have put the first indigenous satellite into orbit," a jubilant President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in remarks broadcast on state television on Tuesday. "With this launch the Islamic Republic of Iran has officially achieved a presence in space."
The Omid (Hope) satellite was sent into space on Monday evening carried by the home-built Safir-2 space rocket, Iranian news agencies reported.
The launch -- which coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution -- comes with Iran still defiantly refusing UN Security Council demands to freeze sensitive nuclear work.
The West suspects Iran of secretly trying to build an atomic bomb and fears the technology used to launch a space rocket could be diverted into development of long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
Ahmadinejad said the satellite carried a message of "peace and brotherhood" to the world and dismissed suggestions that Iran's space programme had military goals, saying: "the world rejects such old talk."
"We have a divine view of technology unlike the dominating powers of the world who have Satanic views," he said. "The satellite and the rocket were made by Iranian scientists, and under the protection of the 12th Imam."
Yet, left-dhimmis will reflexively yell "racism!" if we point out that this guy is batshit crazy.
Ahmadinejad has made scientific development one of the main themes of his presidency, asserting that Iran has reached a peak of progress despite international sanctions and no longer needs to depend on foreign states for help. "On the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution and with the order of the president, the national Omid satellite was launched," the Fars news agency declared. "This is the first satellite launched in the history of our nation and it was carried by the Safir-2 satellite carrier."
The state news agency IRNA said the satellite would take orbital measurements and would circle the Earth 15 times every 24 hours.
Iran sent its first Safir-2 into space in August. The rocket is about 22 metres (72 feet) long, with a diameter of 1.25 metres (a little over four feet) and weighs more than 26 tonnes. Iran's most powerful military missile, the Shahab-3, has a diameter of 1.30 metres and measures 17 metres in length. It has a range of 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles) -- putting archfoe Israel and US forces in the region within reach.
A year ago, Iran triggered concern in the West when it said it had sent a probe into space on the back of a rocket to prepare for a satellite launch, and announced the opening of its space station in a remote western desert. The launch of the probe, Kavoshgar (Explorer), was also timed during the anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
Iran has pursued a space programme for several years, and in October 2005 a Russian-made Iranian satellite named Sina-1 was put into orbit by a Russian rocket.
Reza Taghipour, head of Iranian space agency, said Iran would launch another satellite carrier by the end of the Iranian year on March 20, Fars said.
Is this the "Sputnik from Hell?" That depends on what the media choose to make of it. Has Iran made a giant leap toward great power status, or have they pulled off a costly and irrelevant stunt by recycling ancient technology?
Iranian space program, background at Encyclopedia Astronautica
The rocket was named as "Safir" in today's announcement but is almost certainly the same as the "Shahab SLV" reported last year. This is a derivative of the North Korean No Dong IRBM, which is part of a huge family of rockets derived from the infamous "Scud" (R-17) which, in turn, can trace its own ancestry all the way back to the German V-2 of World War 2.
Fwiw, the first American satellite, Explorer, was launched just over 50 years ago on an American development of the V-2, the Jupiter C (aka Redstone MRBM)), and American Moon rockets were designed by none other than the V-2's creator, Wernher von Braun.
It might seem to be axiomatic that any rocket powerful enough to put a satellite into orbit around the Earth could also launch a warhead to the other side of the Earth, the required Delta/V being lower for the latter.
This is not really the case, however, especially for a relatively new program like Iran's.
Nuclear warheads have a certain minimum mass and a first generation weapon is likely to be quite heavy (the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs weighed on the order of 5 tons.) A satellite can be a great deal smaller. The aforementioned Explorer of 1958 weighed just 31 pounds and its ill-fated predecessor, Vanguard, was the size of a grapefruit and weighed just 3 pounds. With all the miniaturization of electronics since 1958, the Iranian satellite might be a glorified cellphone for all we know.
For the record, Encyclopedia Astronautica gives the Iranian rocket's LEO payload as 60 kg, but that is mostly a guess from the known characteristics of the various components. At that, it could carry a minimum size nuke (about twice the mass) to a target on the order of 6000 km away. It is highly unlikely that Iran can build a nuke that small or integrate it into a workable re-entry package.
Once the rocket works, however, the next step is to upgrade its capability and it isn't much of a leap from there to a real threat.