Omid (, meaning "Hope") was

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

's first domestically made

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

. Omid was a data-processing satellite for research and telecommunications; Iran's state television reported that it was successfully launched on 2 February 2009. After being launched by an Iranian-made

carrier rocket A launch vehicle is typically a rocket-powered vehicle designed to carry a payload (a crewed spacecraft or satellites) from Earth's surface or lower atmosphere to outer space. The most common form is the ballistic missile-shaped multistag ...

, Safir 1, the satellite was placed into a

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television *'' Præsident ...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (born Mahmoud Sabbaghian on 28 October 1956) is an Iranian Iranian principlists, principlist and Iranian nationalism, nationalist politician who served as the sixth president of Iran from 2005 to 2013. He is currently a mem ...

supervised the launch, which coincided with the 30th anniversary of the

Iranian Revolution The Iranian Revolution (, ), also known as the 1979 Revolution, or the Islamic Revolution of 1979 (, ) was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1979. The revolution led to the replacement of the Impe ...

;

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

verified the launch's success the following day. Its

Satellite Catalog Number The Satellite Catalog Number (SATCAT), also known as NORAD Catalog Number, NORAD ID, USSPACECOM object number, is a sequential nine-digit number assigned by the United States Space Command (USSPACECOM), and previously the North American Aerospac ...

or USSPACECOM object number is 33506. Ahmadinejad said the satellite was launched to spread "

monotheism Monotheism is the belief that one God is the only, or at least the dominant deity.F. L. Cross, Cross, F.L.; Livingstone, E.A., eds. (1974). "Monotheism". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. A ...

, peace and justice" in the world. The ''Tehran Times'' reported that "Iran has said it wants to put its own satellites into orbit to monitor natural disasters in the earthquake-prone nation and improve its telecommunications." Foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said that Iran launched the satellite to "meet the needs of the country" and that it was "purely for peaceful purposes". Since there was very little encryption on the satellite, data could be collected and read by citizens. Omid had the shape of a cube with mass of . Sources in the Iranian Space Agency say the satellite's sole payload was a

store and forward Store and forward is a telecommunications technique in which information is sent to an intermediate station where it is kept and sent at a later time to the final destination or to another intermediate station. The intermediate station, or node in ...

telecommunication capability. The launch of Omid makes Iran the ninth country to develop an indigenous satellite launch capability.

Specifications

* Store and Forward Telecommunication Satellite * Dimensions: 40 cm × 40 cm × 40 cm * Weight: 27 kg * Thermal Control: Passive * Frequency Band: UHF * Nodal Period: 90.7 minutes * Inclination: 55.71° * Apogee: 381.2 km * Perigee: 245.5 km

Previous Iranian satellites

Omid was the second Iranian satellite to be placed into orbit. A previous Iranian satellite,

Sina-1 ''Sina-1'' () is the first Iranian artificial satellite, launched at 6:52 UTC October 28, 2005 on board a Cosmos-3M Russian launch vehicle from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. The rocket was also carrying a Russian military Mozhayets-5 satellite, a ...

, was built and launched for Iran by Russia in 2005.

Test launch

Speaking at the opening of a new space centre on 4 February 2008, President Ahmadinejad announced that ''Omid'' would be launched in "the near future". On 17 August 2008, Iranian officials reported that they performed a test of the satellite carrier; they broadcast footage of the Safir rocket launch in darkness. According to an American official, "The vehicle failed shortly after liftoff and in no way reached its intended position."

Orbit

The satellite was launched southeast over the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or approximately 20% of the water area of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia (continent), ...

to avoid overflying neighboring countries and was placed into an orbit with an

inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a reference plane and the orbital plane or axis of direction of the orbiting object. For a satellite orbiting the Eart ...

of 55.5 degrees, with a perigee of 246 km, an apogee of 377 km, and a period of 90.76 minutes.

End of mission

Omid was reported to have completed its mission without any problems. It completed more than 700 orbits over seven weeks. According to U.S. Strategic Command, the Omid satellite re-entered Earth's atmosphere on 25 April 2009, during an 8-hour window centered on 0342 UT. The most likely re-entry location was over the south Atlantic Ocean, east of Buenos Aires, Argentina. No sightings were reported. The rocket body from the launch, which had also entered orbit, re-entered the atmosphere 31 May 2009.

Further launches

Iran launched

Rasad 1 Rasad-1 (, meaning ''Observation'') was an Iranian satellite which was launched in 2011. Satellite The third Iranian satellite, and the second to be launched successfully using an indigenous rocket, Rasad-1 was Iran's first imaging satellite. L ...

on 15 June 2011, orbiting for three weeks.

References

External links

Official Website

Radio observations and other details of the Omid Mission

Video of Iran's first domestic satellite launch

pictures of the opening of Iran's first space system
a
mehrnews.com

Real Time OMID Satellite Tracking
{{Orbital launches in 2009 2009 in Iran Satellites of Iran Spacecraft launched in 2009 Spacecraft which reentered in 2009 Iranian Space Agency