Say Anything Blog

It seems Iran's offer to help Muslim countries launch satellites was a bit premature.

According to the Iranians this launch was a grand success of course, but a U.S. intelligence official said "it was a rather dismal display", and an anonymous Pentagon official had this to say:

the Safir ("Messenger") rocket was launched just before 3 p.m. ET on Saturday from a base near Semnan in northern Iran, carrying what he called a "crude communications satellite" with only "limited capability."

Soon after reaching an altitude above 500,000 feet, the missile failed and broke apart, the source said. The missile broke up when the second stage was firing, and the resulting debris was scattered across Iran and the Gulf of Oman, he said. The rocket was apparently aiming for an orbit about 400 miles (650 kilometers) high, inclined to the equator about 62 degrees.

A more upfront account comes from the U.S. Navy:

Iran's flight test of a space launch vehicle failed Aug. 17, according to radar tracking by a U.S. Navy destroyer and infrared data from U.S. Air Force Defense Support Program (DSP) missile warning spacecraft.

Key data on the failure were provided by the USS Russell, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer patrolling the Persian Gulf.

It is unclear what the exact payload of this missile was. According to the Iranians, it was a dummy satellite but . . . earlier official reports said that the missile launch was carrying a Hope (Omid) communications satellite.