Iranian Space Agency - Sub-orbital Launches

Sub-orbital Launches

On February 25, 2007, the Iranian state-run television announced that a rocket, created by the ministries of science and defense and which carried an unspecified cargo, was successfully launched.This could have been the maiden test flight of the three staged Safir SLV which ended in a failure.Later on it was noted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the failure was due to a technical problem in the last stage of the SLV. On February 4, 2008, Iran successfully launched a two-stage all solid-fuel sub-orbital sounding rocket Kavoshgar-1 (Explorer-1), for a maiden sub-orbital test flight from Shahroud, its newly inaugurated domestic space launch complex. The first stage of the rocket detached after 90 seconds and returned to earth with the help of a parachute while the second stage reached a 200 km altitude before reentering the Earth's atmosphere after 300 seconds. The third section of the rocket, containing an atmospheric probe, climbed to 250 km while successfully transmitting scientific data on the atmosphere and the electromagnetic waves on its path back to Earth. It deployed a parachute after six minutes at a lower altitude. The second kavoshgar (Kavoshgar-2), which carried a space-lab and a restoration system, was launched in November 2008.