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Iran satellite launch, which U.S. warned against, fails

Eventually you will succeed, India had it’s fair share of failures in developing a reliable launch vehicle.

This is true, but Indian effort was taken more seriously and with greater importance. Iran’s space program is stuck in 1st gear with not a lot of effort being put in to expand it. 1 launch a year is not sufficient by any means.

Iran’s situation is even more difficult. India can/could rely on foreign parts, specialist expertise and even blueprints/technology to transfer to fix its problems.

Unfortunately, Iran can get ZERO outside help to figure out what went wrong due to sanctions and the ambiguous “dual use” nature of space vehicles.
 
This is true, but Indian effort was taken more seriously and with greater importance. Iran’s space program is stuck in 1st gear with not a lot of effort being put in to expand it. 1 launch a year is not sufficient by any means.

Iran’s situation is even more difficult. India can/could rely on foreign parts, specialist expertise and even blueprints/technology to transfer to fix its problems.

Unfortunately, Iran can get ZERO outside help to figure out what went wrong due to sanctions and the ambiguous “dual use” nature of space vehicles.

This narrative is incomplete, after the 1974 nuclear explosion, Indian space research was in a much disadvantageous position, and to top it all off, we did not had ballistic missile technology to reverse engineer from. Iran is in a place, where India was in the 1980s in terms of satellite launch capability.
 
The launch was clearly not a complete failure, the 1st stage worked without a hitch and they got a 2nd stage separation and ignition....

Failed launches are quite normal in space programs and specially with new SLV's countries usually fail 2-3 times before they perfect all the stages of a new SLV carrier fact is what wouldn't be normal is if every Iranian space launch was a success

Fact is if Iran hadn't attempted to appease the west and if Rohani hadn't messed with Iran's space program we would have moved passed the Simorgh launcher already
 
Last launch of Simorgh SLV was July 2017 (18 months ago), it had no payload and the second stage failed. This launch carried a 100kg satellite and the first and second stage worked (i.e. they fixed the problem with the second stage), only the third stage didn't work fully.

This was the first launch of Simorgh was a satellite payload and it looks like 2/3 stages worked perfectly! For only the second orbital launch of Simorgh SLV (and first with a payload) I think that's quite good.

Next launch of Simorgh SLV (hopefully with another 100kg satellite) is scheduled for August 2019. If that succeeds then Iran will have successful SLV with ability to send 100kg payload into LEO with totally indigenous technologies!

Simorgh is also capable of 350kg payloads, so within 2-4 years we should see bigger payloads using Simorgh, and that does not even include the planned Sarir SLV.

Resolution of Iranian satellites is also making big progress, Payam satellite (the one that failed) had a resolution of 45m. Pars-1 (Soha) satellite is already completed with 15m resolution sensor and Pars-2 and Pars-3 (with 2m resolution) are planned for the coming years.

To compare: Omid satellite sent into LEO in 2009 was 30kg and had image resolution of 500-1000m, so if we can send Payam-2 to LEO in 2019 that is progress of 30kg-->100kg and 1000m-->45m resolution in 10 years. That is not even fully accurate because we had such abilities for a long time, only lacked the political will and funds to actually do the test launches! Hopefully if this fixes we can have more launches and this progress will become faster and in 10 years who knows where we will be!

India started their SLV programme in 1979 and didn't send a 100kg satellite into LEO until 1994 (and that was with a lot of US help). Also, India had 3 consecutive failed launches until the 4th attempt succeeded! In 1979 we had nothing, we didn't even have a Space Agency until 2004! At peak Iran's budget for space agency was around $80 million, now it around $8 million! For such a low budget it is a miracle they can even maintain the space centre let alone launch huge SLVs like safir with 100kg satellites!

How many countries have fully indigenous technology to do this all by themselves, especially while brutal sanctions aim to topple their country?

Before 1970s Iran was extremely poor and under-developed, then from 70s the shah laid the framework for societal development but the focus was on economy not self sufficient military (or self sufficient anything). Then Saddam invaded Iran in 1980 and Iran was engaged in a brutal and expensive war until 1988, then Iran had to rebuild the economy and country whilst under US sanctions, and only since 1990s did Iran really start self sufficiency programs, from basic things like mines to guns and now to tanks and radars and SLVs.

The progress hasn't been as fast as we would like but even with sanctions in 10-15 years it is very reasonable that Iran can have a fully indigenous GEOINT capability!

@skyshadow @Tokhme khar @Hack-Hook please let me know if I made any mistakes in what I wrote!
 
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Iran is in a place, where India was in the 1980s in terms of satellite launch capability.
India did not successfully launch a 100kg satellite into LEO until 1994 (India's first satellite launch was 1979). No doubt the budget was far higher (Iran's space budget was recently destroyed from $70m to $7m!) and India was not suffering sanctions and had US help.
 
India did not successfully launch a 100kg satellite into LEO until 1994 (India's first satellite launch was 1979). No doubt the budget was far higher (Iran's space budget was recently destroyed from $70m to $7m!) and India was not suffering sanctions and had US help.

India has never had US's help in its space program. Countries do not share space technology, it is something that has to be developed through indigenous effort by every country.

In fact in 1992 US put sanctions on india for trying to acquire cryogenic rocket engine because they thought it would be used on a ICBM (utter nonsense).

Also india's first successful launch to LEO with 100kg sat was in 1992. Over next 24 months india went from 100kg sat to 800 kg with first successful PSLV launch in October 1994.

I think iran should focus on building heavier and more capable sats for simorgh as well as increasing launch frequency. In the long run it is suspected that iran will acquire the RD-250 clone that NK is using on their Hwasong-15 ICBM. If this happens then iran will have plenty of options for future launch vehicles with such a high performance engine at their disposal.
 
India did not successfully launch a 100kg satellite into LEO until 1994 (India's first satellite launch was 1979). No doubt the budget was far higher (Iran's space budget was recently destroyed from $70m to $7m!) and India was not suffering sanctions and had US help.
India has never had US's help in its space program. Countries do not share space technology, it is something that has to be developed through indigenous effort by every country.

In fact in 1992 US put sanctions on india for trying to acquire cryogenic rocket engine because they thought it would be used on a ICBM (utter nonsense).

Also india's first successful launch to LEO with 100kg sat was in 1992. Over next 24 months india went from 100kg sat to 800 kg with first successful PSLV launch in October 1994.

I think iran should focus on building heavier and more capable sats for simorgh as well as increasing launch frequency. In the long run it is suspected that iran will acquire the RD-250 clone that NK is using on their Hwasong-15 ICBM. If this happens then iran will have plenty of options for future launch vehicles with such a high performance engine at their disposal.


When it comes to SLV's in the early 90's Russia would of been the best country to go to for engines and rockets especially right after the collapse of the USSR the Indians would of had a lot of opportunities to go after Russian rocket's & engines to take home and reverse engineer which would have been far easier to do than asking the U.S. for help on SLV's plus Russians have far better rocket engines anyways and access would of been a lot simpler and that would of made them a more logical source.... Now for the Satellite it's self or part required to build it I would say no doubt they would have purchased American parts....

As for Iran's Simorgh Launcher this is a launcher that could potentially in time be upgraded to something like the Russian Kosmos-3 SLV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos-3M

Which could potentially satisfy Iran's LEO needs but to make Iran's space program truly profitable and worth while Iran needs to be able to send multi tone communication sat's in a GSO `
 

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