Russia to launch Iranian satellite from Vostochny Cosmodrome on Feb 29 - Deputy PM Novak

TEHRAN. Feb 28 (Interfax) - A spacecraft built by Russian enterprises for Iran will be launched as a secondary payload from Vostochny Cosmodrome on February 29, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said.

"Space is one of the areas of cooperation we are actively developing. The launch of a spacecraft built by Russian specialists for our Iranian partners will become a historic event tomorrow," Novak said at a meeting of the Russian-Iranian commission for commercial and economic cooperation.

"It will become an important milestone in our cooperation, paving the way to the implementation of new, even greater projects," he said.

As reported, a Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle carrying the Meteor-M No.2-4 satellite and 18 Russian and foreign small satellites as a secondary payload will be launched from Vostochny Cosmodrome at 8:43 a.m. on February 29.

Russia has already cooperated with Iran in building and launching spacecraft, when a Russian Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome successfully put Iran's Khayyam Earth remote sensing satellite into orbit on August 9, 2022.

Roscosmos CEO Yury Borisov said on December 14, 2022, that Russia is ready to discuss cooperation in building spacecraft with Iran. In addition, according to Roscosmos, Russia and Iran discussed crewed space flights. On January 5, 2023, Roscosmos said that a memorandum of cooperation on launch services was signed with the Iranian companies SAHAB and SpaceOmid.