TEHRAN: Iran said yesterday it has launched its first homemade satellite into orbit. “Dear Iranians, your children have put the first indigenous satellite into orbit,” a jubilant President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on state television after a launch coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the Iranian revolution.
“With this launch the Islamic Republic of Iran has officially achieved a presence in space,” he said.
The Omid (2) satellite was sent into space on Monday evening carried by the home-built Safir space rocket, local news agencies reported.
The announcement rattled the West. France expressed concern because the technology used was “very similar” to that employed in ballistic missiles. “We can’t but link this to the very serious concerns about the development of military nuclear capacity,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said in Paris.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the satellite program could possibly lead to the development of ballistic missiles. “That’s of great concern to us,” he said.
In London, British Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell voiced “serious concerns” over the launch.
Ahmadinejad said the satellite carried a message of “peace and brotherhood” to the world and dismissed suggestions that country’s space program had military goals. “We have a divine view of technology unlike the dominating powers of the world, who have Satanic views,” he said.
Iranian aerospace expert Asghar Ebrahimi said Omid has an elliptical orbit with a perigee of 250 km and apogee of 400 km and would collect environmental data.
