According to the UPI, Iran is preparing to launch its second indigenous communications satellite aboard a Safir-2 (Ambassador) booster rocket, an event that will test the country's ballistic missile capabilities. If it's successful, it could impact significantly on U.S.-led negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear ambitions by demonstrating the Iranians' growing mastery of missile technology.
Satellite launch vehicles, such as the two-stage Safir-2, believed to be a modified Shehab-3 intermediate-range ballistic missile, are generally considered to have a potential application as an intercontinental ballistic missile. Ten months ago, Iran successfully launched the Omid 1 (Hope) satellite into orbit atop a 72-foot Safir from the Semnan Space Research Center in the Dasht-e-Kavir desert south of Tehran after at least one failure. The new satellite, known as Mesbah (Lantern), will weigh 132 pounds, 10 times more than Omid, which burned up on re-entering Earth's atmosphere in April. Jane's Intelligence Digest reported at the time that the use of a two-stage launch vehicle was a "noteworthy technical achievement."
According to Western sources, the Iranians have built two Mesbahs in cooperation with Italy's Carlo Gavazzi Space Company. The concerns of the United States and Israel, along with European and Arab states, about Iran's missile capabilities were heightened earlier this month with reports that the U.N. nuclear watchdog believed Iranian scientists had experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design. The dossier compiled by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency was described as "breathtaking" by Western experts. U.S. surveillance satellites and aircraft have been monitoring the Semnan facility since Tehran indicated in the summer that another satellite launch was in the works.
No target date for the launch of the satellite was announced, but state-run television has been broadcasting footage of booster tests in hangars at the Semnan facility for several weeks. Following the Omid launch on February 3, the telecommunications minister, Mohammad Soleimani, announced that Iran was manufacturing four more satellites. Iran has also announced that it plans to start sending research animals into space in 2010-11, first on Shahabs deployed as sounding rockets that can reach an altitude of 100 miles. This would be followed by orbital missions using animals as a prelude to a manned Islamic space programs by about 2021, according to Soleimani's successor, Raza Taiq-pour.
