Photos show burning Iranian launch pad
Images suggest rocket carrying satellite exploded on ignition or during liftoff
DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES — A rocket at an Iranian space centre that was to conduct a satellite launch criticized by the U.S. apparently exploded on its launch pad Thursday, satellite images show, suggesting the Islamic Republic suffered its third failed launch this year alone.
State media and officials did not immediately acknowledge the incident at the Imam Khomeini Space Centre in Iran’s Semnan province.
However, satellite images by Planet Labs Inc. showed a black plume of smoke rising above a launch pad there, with what appeared to be the charred remains of a rocket and its launch stand. In previous days, satellite images had shown officials there repainted the launch pad blue. On Thursday morning, half of that paint apparently had been burned away.
“Whatever happened there, it blew up and you’re looking at the smouldering remains of what used to be there,” said David Schmerler, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.
Schmerler said the images of the space centre suggested that the rocket either exploded during ignition or possibly briefly lifted off before crashing back down on the pad.
Water run-off from the pad, likely from trying to extinguish the blaze, could be seen along with a host of vehicles parked nearby.
NPR first reported on the satellite images of the apparent failed launch at the space centre, some 240 kilometres southeast of Iran’s capital, Tehran.
Iranian satellite launches had been anticipated before the end of the year.
In July, Iran’s Information and Communications Technology Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi told The Associated Press that Tehran planned three more launches this year, two for satellites that do remote-sensing work and another that handles communications.
The Nahid-1 is reportedly the telecommunication satellite, which authorities plan to have in orbit for two-and-a-half months. Nahid in Farsi means “Venus.” The satellite, which had Iran’s first foldable solar panels, was supposed to be in a low orbit around the Earth for some twoand-a-half months.
Earlier on Thursday, Iran’s Defence Minister Gen. Amir Hatami told the state-run IRNA news agency that the country’s satellite activities were “being done in a transparent way.”
“Whenever activity and research bear successful results, we will announce the good news,” Hatami said. Iran at times in the past hasn’t acknowledged failed launches.
“I think it is certainly an image problem,” said Michael Connell, an Iran analyst at the Arlington, Va.-based non-profit research organization CNA.
“I think it’s going to embarrass the Iranian space agency. On the other hand though, getting a satellite into space ... takes time.”
Over the past decade, Iran has sent several short-lived satellites into orbit and in 2013 launched a monkey into space.