Iran has launched a trio of new satellites into space with the help of a Russian rocket, the country’s state media reported Sunday (Dec. 28).
The satellites launched into orbit atop a Russian Soyuz rocket as part of a rideshare mission that also launched two Earth-observation satellites for Russia and 47 other satellites for various customers.
According to Iran’s IRNA news agency the three new satellites, called Paya, Zafar 2 and Kowsar, are Earth-observation satellites to be used to monitor Iran’s agriculture, map natural resources and the environment.
Russia’s space agency Roscosmos launched the Iranian satellites alongside two Russian Aist-2T Earth observation satelites and dozens of cubesats aboard a Soyuz 2.1b rocket on a mission that lifted off from the country’s Vostochny Cosmodrome in Siberia. Fifty-two satellites were launched in all.
In addition the Aist-2T and Iranian satellites, the Soyuz rocket carried a small satellite for the Sputnix Group based in the United Arab Emirates, as well as cubesats for Russian universities, and a satellite to measure climate change and space weather for the Russian Hydrometeorological Service, according to Russia’s TASS news service.
