Russia launched an Iranian surveillance satellite from Kazakhstan today amid concerns from some Western officials that Moscow could use it to support its attack on Ukraine, which Tehran denies.
The Khayam remote sensing satellite was launched by a Soyuz rocket at 08:52 (Greece time) from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome, according to images broadcast live by the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
The satellite, named after the Persian poet and philosopher Omar Khayyam (1048-1131), was then put into orbit.
It aims mainly to “monitor the country’s borders”, help improve agricultural production, control water resources and natural disasters, according to Iran’s space agency.
For the United States, Iran’s space program is intended for military rather than commercial purposes, while Tehran maintains that its aerospace activities are peaceful and in line with a UN Security Council resolution.
This time, however, Iranian authorities had to fend off accusations of a different kind, after the US newspaper The Washington Post reported that Russia “considered using the satellite for months” as part of its attack on Ukraine, before later ceding control of it. in Iran.
“All orders related to the control and operation of this satellite will be issued from the first day and immediately after the launch by Iranian experts based in the Iranian Ministry of Communications,” the Iranian Space Agency announced on Sunday.
“No third country can access the data” sent by the satellite through an “encryption algorithm”, the same source assured, denouncing the “false” claims of the American newspaper.
In October 2005, Russia had already launched the first Iranian satellite, Sina-1, from the Plesetsk cosmodrome (northwest Russia).
Khayyam’s launch came three weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Iran, where on July 19 he met with his counterpart Ibrahim Raisi and the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Source: RES-MPE
Source: Capital
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