Iran simultaneously launches three satellites into orbit

Mahda, Keyhan-2, and Hatef-1 research satellites were put at altitudes between 450 and 1,100 kilometers above the Earth’s surface on Sunday.

Mahda is a research satellite developed and tested at the Iranian Space Research Center. It weighs 32 kilograms and has been designed to test advanced satellite subsystems.

Mahda’s main mission is to examine the performance of the Simorgh satellite carrier in launching multiple space payloads in low Earth altitudes and evaluate new homegrown space technologies.

On January 20, the Iranian Space Agency announced it had successfully placed a homemade satellite into space’s orbit. The satellite, dubbed Sorayya which means Pleiades, a space constellation, in Persian, was placed into an orbit of 750 kilometers above the earth’s surface.