Iran developing new reconnaissance satellites, IRGC successfully launc…

Iran's two new remote sensing satellites Pars-2 and Pars-3 are under development, and Iran's IRGC satellite Noor-3 was successfully launched onboard its Qased rocket. (Sepah News)

Two Iranian remote sensing satellites are currently under development, the head of the Iranian Space Agency (ISA), Hossein Salariyeh, announced on 4 October.

The satellites, called Pars-2 and Pars-3, are being built by a subsidiary of the Iranian Ministry of Defence – Iran Electronics Industries – and the Iranian Space Research Center.

Construction of Pars-2 has begun with Pars-3 currently in the preliminary design phase, Salariyeh said.

The launch dates were not disclosed.

Pars-2 is expected to have a 4 m imaging accuracy, this will be refined down to 2 m for Pars-3, Salariyeh had previously disclosed.

Along with this project, Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force successfully launched its Noor-3 military Earth observation satellite onboard their Qased launch vehicle on 27 September. This follows the launch of Noor-2 in March 2022 and Noor-1 in April 2020, although the latter fell back to Earth in April 2022.