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<\/p>\nIran\u2019s Simorgh rocket appears to have suffered another failure during a previously-unexpected launch Thursday. Iranian media has reported that the rocket lifted off from the Imam Khomeini Space Centre at 03:30 UTC (07:00 local time) Thursday morning with three payloads aboard, and although a successful launch was announced, no objects have been detected in orbit.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Iran made its first successful satellite launch in February 2009, using a Safir rocket to deploy the Omid spacecraft into low Earth orbit. Derived from the Shahab-3 missile \u2013 itself a descendent of the Soviet R-17 family of missiles known in the West as the Scud \u2013 this had a relatively limited payload capacity but was enough to place Iran\u2019s first, small, satellites into orbit.<\/p>\n
Simorgh was developed as a successor to Safir, with the aim of giving Iran the ability to launch larger payloads, or several smaller satellites on a single rocket. It is a three-stage rocket which is reported to share some design similarities with North Korea\u2019s Unha rocket \u2013 particularly in relation to its first stage. Simorgh launches from the Imam Khomeini Space Centre in Iran\u2019s Semnan Province, which has separate launch pads for it and the smaller Safir.<\/p>\n
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Simorgh on its launch pad prior to Thursday\u2019s launch (credit: Iranian Ministry of Defense and West Asia News Agency)<\/p>\n
The Simorgh project was first announced in February 2010 as part of the celebrations for Iran\u2019s first National Space Technology Day, which marked the first anniversary of Omid\u2019s launch. The rocket\u2019s maiden flight would come in April 2016, when a two-stage version of the rocket made a suborbital test flight. Due to the secrecy surrounding Iran\u2019s space program, and unsuccessful launches in particular, the exact number of launches that Simorgh has made to date is not completely clear, although what is known for certain is that multiple launches have taken place and that the rocket is still yet to reach orbit.<\/p>\n
Aside from the initial test flight and Thursday\u2019s launch, three more Simorgh flights have definitely taken place with at least one more, earlier this year, considered likely. The first of these was in July 2017. Like Thursday\u2019s launch, Iran reported that the rocket had flown a successful test mission \u2013 implying a planned suborbital test \u2013 however US intelligence analysts tracking the launch identified that it had failed about twenty seconds into the second stage burn. A display at an Iranian exhibition earlier this year indicated that the Tolou-1 satellite \u2013 which had been expected to fly aboard Simorgh \u2013 was launched in 2017 and therefore was almost certainly the payload of that launch.<\/p>\n
Two more launches took place in January 2019 and February 2020. These occurred during an unusual period of openness for Iran\u2019s space program, with both missions were announced beforehand as orbital launches and publicly acknowledged to have failed to reach orbit \u2013 although in the case of the latter, the rocket was claimed to have launched successfully, but \u201cnot reach[ed] the speed needed to inject the satellite into orbit\u201d.<\/p>\n
In June this year, a US defence spokesman confirmed that the American military had detected another unsuccessful launch from Iran on 12 June. A few weeks later activity around the Simorgh launch pad suggested that another flight was imminent, which reportedly occurred on or before the 24th of that month. It is likely that at least one, if not both, of these launches involved Simorgh, with no spacecraft being tracked in orbit after either mission. Iran has not acknowledged that either launch took place.<\/p>\n