The US has quietly acknowledged that Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard successfully put an imaging satellite into orbit this week in a launch that resembled others previously criticized by Washington as helping Tehran’s ballistic missile program.
The US military has not responded to repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press since Iran announced the launch of the Noor-3 satellite on Wednesday, the latest successful launch by the Revolutionary Guard after Iran’s civilian space program faced a series of failed launches in recent years.
However, early yesterday, data published by the Web site space-track.org listed a launch on Wednesday by Iran that put the Noor-3 satellite into orbit. Information for the Web site is supplied by the 18th Space Defense Squadron of the US Space Force, the newest arm of the US military.
Photo: AFP / Iran Press
It put the satellite at more than 450km above the Earth’s surface, which corresponds to Iranian state media reports regarding the launch. It also identified the rocket carrying the satellite as a Qased, a three-stage rocket fueled by both liquid and solid fuels first launched by the Guard in 2020 when it unveiled its up-to-then-secret space program.
“Noor” means “light” in Farsi, while “Qased” means “messenger.”
Authorities released a video of a rocket taking off from a mobile launcher without saying where it occurred. Details in the video earlier analyzed by the AP corresponded with a Guard base near Shahroud, about 330km northeast of Tehran. The base is in Semnan province, which hosts the Imam Khomeini Spaceport from which Iran’s civilian space program operates.
Space-track.org also listed the missile as having been launched from the Guard base at Shahroud.
Speaking on Thursday night to Iranian state television, Guard space commander General Ali Jafarabadi described the Noor-3 satellite as having “image accuracy that is two-and-a-half times that of the Noor-2 satellite.”
Noor-2, launched in March last year, remains in orbit. Noor-1, launched in 2020, fell back to Earth last year.
Jafarabadi said Noor-3 has thrusters for the first time that allow it to maneuver in orbit. He also offered a wider description of Iran’s hopes for its satellite program, including potentially controlling drones. That could raise further concerns for the West and Ukraine, which Russia has bombarded with Iranian-made bomb-carrying drones for more than a year.
“If you look at the recent wars in the world, you will see that success on the battlefield is very dependent on the use of satellite technologies,” Jafarabadi said. “Now the armed forces in all the progressive countries are trying to make all their equipment remote control, it means that to make it steerable, when a vessel or any other equipment takes a long distance from us, it is no longer possible to see and guide it, except through satellite.”
The image-taking capabilities of the Noor-3 remain unclear. International sanctions on Iran have locked it out of accessing commercially available imagery, forcing it to develop its own homegrown satellites.
The head of the US Space Command dismissed the Noor-1 as a “tumbling Web cam in space” that would not provide vital intelligence.
The US says Iran’s satellite launches defy a UN Security Council resolution and has called on Tehran to undertake no activity involving ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. UN sanctions related to Iran’s ballistic missile program are due to expire on Oct. 18.
The US intelligence community’s 2023 worldwide threat assessment says the development of satellite launch vehicles “shortens the timeline” for Iran to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile because it uses similar technology.
“Iran’s continued advancement of its ballistic missile capabilities poses a serious threat to regional and international security and remains a significant nonproliferation concern,” US Department of States spokesman Matthew Miller said on Thursday. “We continue to use a variety of nonproliferation tools, including sanctions, to counter the further advancement of Iran’s ballistic missile program and its ability to proliferate missiles and related technology to others.”
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