A senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has announced that Iran will launch two more satellites into space by the end of the calendar year ending March 19.
Brigadier General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the IRGC’s Aerospace Division, made the announcement on Wednesday following the successful launch of Nour-3, an imaging satellite, into orbit.
“Nour-3 satellite is equipped with cameras and will be involved in signal collection,” he said. “By the end of the year, we will have the launch of two more satellites,” he added.
Nour-3 was the third satellite put into orbit by the IRGC, using a Qased carrier. The IRGC, which operates its own separate space program, launched its first satellite into space in April 2020. A second satellite launch was successfully carried out in early 2022.
“With the progress we are making in this direction, in the not-so-distant future, we will have a constellation of satellites in orbit,” Hajizadeh noted.
Reacting to the launch, IRGC Chief Commander Major General Hossein Salami said on Wednesday that the elite force will be using the Nour-3 satellite to “meet its intelligence needs”.
The IRGC used its Qased carrier to place the satellite in an orbit 450 kilometers from the surface of the Earth at a speed of 7.6 kilometers per second.
Source » spacewar