Two Turtles and a Mouse: History of the Iranian Space Program

On February 3, 2010, the Iranian Space Agency launched a 3-metre long rocket, the Kavoshgar-3 (the name means "Explorer" in Farsi), which successfully carried two turtles, a mouse, and several worms into low Earth orbit. Although a relatively routine task for the larger Russian, American, and European space agencies, the event was a notable milestone for Iran, and controversial president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad greeted the occasion with a variety of exaggerated rhetorical declarations, namely that rapid Iranian progress in space travel would allow his country to defeat the United States in "the scientific arena."

Obviously this is a pretty tall order for a country that has only just sent its second rocket into space, on the third attempt to do so (the first failed in the atmosphere). However, it's worthwhile having an idea of just where Iran's space program is right now, and where it is going -- not least because, just as in the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1950s, Iranian rocket R&D isn't just a matter of space science: it carries substantial side benefits for the military.

From Ballistic Missile to Space Rocket

In a sense, Iran has being experimenting with a form of space travel since the 1980s -- if only in the sense that it has been acquiring ballistic missiles since that time, which with some modifications have been at least theoretically capable of achieving Earth orbit. The first series of these ballistic missiles were codenamed Shahab; the launches which have taken place over the past two years have been based on a more advanced, redesigned rocket loosely derived from the last of the Shahab series, codenamed Safir.

The first Shahab missiles were solely military in nature: Shahab-1 and Shahab-2 were the Iranian designations for domestically produced variants of the Soviet Scud missile, sold widely to developing countries as part of the former communist bloc arms trade. During the late 1990s, however, the missile program finally achieved considerable and lasting success by deriving an Iranian version of the North Korean Nodong-1 missile, known as the Shahab-3. It is believed that the research which went into the Shahab-3 model was successfully reapplied in subsequent years to new versions of both military missiles and civilian space rockets.

Iranian military rocket research then, to an extent, separated from space research and went on to develop several medium- and long-range ballistic missiles which have not yet played a serious role in space research, such as the Sejil, speculatively named Shahab-5 and Shahab-6 (based on designs purchased from North Korea), Fajr-3 ("Dawn"), and two rockets probably derived from the successful Shahab-3 project, the Ghadr-110 and the Ashoura.

At the same time as this missile-based rocketry research continued, additional engineers had begun to design satellites capable of being built and operated from Iran. In 2005, by which time the Shahab rocket program had been essentially abandoned, the first Iranian reconnaissance satellite, Sina-1, went into orbit aboard a Russian carrier rocket, which also launched a variety of European, Chinese and Japanese satellites.

The Iranian-Built Rocket

After Russia failed to launch another Iranian-built satellite, the Mesbah-1, in 2005, Iran apparently decided that it would need to cover the entire space travel agenda itself, building a reliable rocket of its own as well. Since then, its public relations agenda has revolved around high-profile events every February. Two years ago, the country formally opened its new space centre and launched Kavoshgar-1 ("Explorer"). That August, a second rocket flight was launched but failed for unspecified reasons.

In February 2009, almost a year to the day before this week's Kavoshgar launch, the government launched a new telecommunications satellite, Omid ("Hope"). At the time, there was speculation that Omid had been launched aboard a new, powerful two-stage rocket, although many analysts believed that the most likely launch vehicle was a cumbersome three-stage Safir rocket. It is now believed that the launch took place on a Safir-2, a more advanced version which Iran intends to form the foundation of its space program for the next several years.

The Future of Iran in Space

At the same time he was crowing over the success of Kavoshgar-3, Ahmadinejad also unveiled several hints about the future of Iranian space travel. His government has, it seems, developed and built a successor to the Mesbah-1 satellite, which was supposed to be launched on a Russian rocket in 2005 but never was. (Iran, predictably, blames the Russians for not doing so.) Mesbah-2, along with a pair of other new domestically built satellites, will be launched into orbit on a newly developed Iranian launcher, Simorgh. Simorgh will be the first serious space travel vehicle, at 27 metres long and powered by sufficiently large rockets to propel large satellites into orbit. Flights may begin as early as later this year.

It's not exactly Star Trek, or even the ESA, but the government of Iran has set its sights on becoming a notable player in space travel. Iranian officials have claimed that they plan on launching a manned flight sometime within the next decade. We'll see how it turns out.