Tehran, Iran, June 20 By Mehdi Sepahvand – Trend:
Iran says it will place “professional satellites” at the geosynchronous orbit by 2025. Iran’s current satellites are tentatively built to improve the country’s space technology, but two professional satellites will be launched in ten years, Mohammad Homayoun Sadr, deputy director of Iran Space Organization, told Mehr news agency June 20.
The official said there are two special projects underway regarding the professional satellites, one being high-resolution imaging and the other being telecommunication services. “This year (to end March 20, 2017), we will send one test satellite into space.
For the next year we also plan to send two,” he stated. Iran’s recently built satellite Mesbah was never launched. Iran sent the satellite to Italy to be launched, but Italy has neither launched the satellite nor does it give it back, said Mahdinejad Nouri, a senior official of Iran’s General Staff of Armed Forces, on June 14.
Mesbah cost Iran about 100 trillion rials (about $4 million) to be built. Earlier in January, Mahmoud Vaezi, Iran's Minister of Communications and Information Technology announced that building a communication satellite and a remote satellite were on the country's agenda.