TEHRAN, Feb. 29 (Xinhua) -- Iran successfully put a domestically developed satellite, Pars-1, into a 500-km orbit on Thursday via a Soyuz rocket launch in eastern Russia, state media reported.
The 134-kg satellite, built by the Iranian Space Research Institute, is designed for remote-sensing applications and testing technologies for future satellites, said the official IRNA news agency.
The satellite, equipped with three cameras that can capture Earth images in visible, short-wave infrared and thermal infrared ranges, can cover 95 percent of Iran's territory in less than 100 days and the whole country in less than 45 days with its night-vision capability, according to IRNA.
Hassan Salarieh, head of the Iranian Space Agency (ISA), said at a press conference that Pars-1 was the 12th satellite launched under the current administration, which took office in August 2021, IRNA reported.
He said Iran would launch another satellite, Pars-2, with a higher resolution of 8 meters per pixel, in the next Iranian year starting on March 20, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
Late last month, Iran launched a homegrown rocket from a launch site in central Iran, sending a communication and research satellite and two nanosatellites to an elliptic orbit with a minimum altitude of 450 km, the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA) reported. ■
