Iran says it launched 3 satellites to space on Russian rocket: report

Iran has launched a trio of new satellites into space with the help of a Russian rocket, the country's state media reported Sunday (Dec. 28).

The satellites launched into orbit atop a Russian Soyuz rocket as part of a rideshare mission that also launched two Earth-observation satellites for Russia and 47 other satellites for various customers.

"These satellites were designed and produced by Iranian scientists ... despite all the sanctions and threats," Iran's ambassador to Russia Kazem Jalali told state TV according to the Reuters wire service. Iran's activities in space have been affected by ongoing sanctions from Western nations over its nuclear program.

According to Iran's IRNA news agency the three new satellites, called Paya, Zafar 2 and Kowsar, are Earth-observation satellites to be used to monitor Iran's agriculture, map natural resources and the environment.

Russia's space agency Roscosmos launched the Iranian satellites alongside two Russian Aist-2T Earth observation satelites and dozens of cubesats aboard a Soyuz 2.1b rocket on a mission that lifted off from the country's Vostochny Cosmodrome in Siberia. Fifty-two satellites were launched in all.

In addition the Aist-2T and Iranian satellites, the Soyuz rocket carried a small satellite for the Sputnix Group based in the United Arab Emirates, as well as cubesats for Russian universities, and a satellite to measure climate change and space weather for the Russian Hydrometeorological Service, according to Russia's TASS news service.