Thursday, February 03, 2005
Russia to launch Iran spy satellites, says report
* Moscow’s spokesman downplays the move, saying site will also launch civilian satellites
MOSCOW: Russia plans to launch Iran’s first two satellites, which were built to gather intelligence from space, the business daily Kommersant reported on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov has signed an order permitting the Russian defence ministry to launch the two satellites, named Mesbah and Sinah-1, from the Plesetsk launch site in the far north of the country, the daily said without citing sources.
A government spokesman confirmed that Fradkov had signed an order allowing the Plesetsk site to be used for launching civilian satellites including the Iranian ones, but downplayed the decision.
The spokesman said the site would also be used for launches of civilian satellites from other countries including China, Britain, Norway, Germany, Japan and the European Space Agency and would be controlled by foreign experts making use of Russian facilities. Kommersant said the two Iranian satellites were due to be launched between April and June of this year and said they were designed for “distant examination of the earth’s surface,” a term the daily said was the common idiom for intelligence gathering.
The satellites were to be launched aboard Russian-built Kosmos-3M rockets and would be placed in a low geo-synchronised orbit, Kommersant said.
The news comes amid rising tension between the United States and Iran over the Islamic state’s nuclear programme and seemed likely to come under close scrutiny by Washington, which is nervous about Tehran’s development of advanced technologies with dual military and civilian uses.
Iranian media reported on Sunday that Tehran and Moscow had signed a 132-million-dollar contract for construction of a new Iranian telecommunications satellite, the Zohreh (Venus). That satellite would be used to bolster Tehran’s telecommunications infrastructure by handling data, audio and video signals, and is to be operational within two and a half years, the Iranian news agency IRNA said.
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