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A Russian rocket successfully put an Iranian satellite into orbit on Tuesday.
The Soyuz rocket was scheduled to lift off at 8:52 a.m. Moscow time (11:22 a.m. IST) on Tuesday from the Russian-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan.
About nine minutes after launch, it put an Iranian satellite called Khayyam into orbit. It is named after Omar Khayyam, a Persian scientist who lived in the 11th and 12th centuries. Iran said the satellite, equipped with high-resolution cameras, would be used for environmental monitoring and would be fully under its control.
Tehran says no other country has access to the information it collects and it will only be used for civilian purposes, but there are allegations that Russia could use it for surveillance Ukraine during its military operations there.
If it operates successfully, the satellite will give Iran the ability to monitor its archenemy Israel and other countries in the Middle East.
Iranian state television broadcast footage of the launch live, noting that the country’s telecommunications minister attended the launch in Kazakhstan. The satellite will provide high-resolution surveillance images with a resolution of one meter per pixel, state TV quoted Iran’s Civil Space Agency as saying.
Western civilian satellites offer about half a meter per pixel, while American spy satellites are thought to have higher resolution.
Iran has both a civilian and military space program, which the United States fears could be used to advance its ballistic missile program. However, Iran has experienced a series of accidents and satellite launch failures in recent years.
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