April 2020. Iran has claimed it has put its first military satellite into orbit, further raising tensions with the US at a time the two countries are already facing off in the Persian Gulf.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said the satellite “Noor” (Light) was in a 425km (264 miles) high orbit, after a successful launch. Iran launched its first civilian satellite in 2009. It came on the day Donald Trump went on Twitter to announce he had ordered the US navy “to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea”, following an incident in which nearly a dozen small Iranian boats had steered within a few yards of US warships. The Pentagon said it was too early to say whether the Iranian satellite launch had been successful but the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) issued a new code designator for an orbiting object which appeared consistent with Noor.
“I consider that this confirms that the Iranian satellite successfully reached orbit,” Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, commented on Twitter.
Apr 2020. Iran Launches Military Satellite into Space
