VOSTOCHNY SPACEPORT /Amur Region/, February 29. /TASS/. The Fregat booster launched from the Vostochny spaceport has put 17 Russian satellites and a small Iranian satellite into orbit as a secondary payload along the Meteor-M No. 2-4 weather satellite, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos said in a statement.
"Iran’s small spacecraft Pars 1 - a demonstration satellite designed to practice remote Earth sensing technologies - was put into orbit on behalf of the Iranian Space Agency along with the Meteor-M No. 2-4 satellite," the statement reads.
In addition, 17 small satellites made by the Russian private company Sputnix (part of the Sitronics Group) were also delivered to orbit. As many as 16 of them will join the constellation of the SITRO-AIS automatic identification system designed to track sea vessels, while the Zorky-2M spacecraft will join the constellation of ultra-small Earth remote sensing satellites.
The launch vehicle carrying the satellites blasted off from the Vostochny spaceport at 8:43 a.m. Moscow time (5:43 a.m. GMT). In nine minutes and 23 seconds, it delivered the Fregat booster with the spacecraft to low Earth orbit. It took about an hour to deliver the Meteor-M satellite to the 820-km orbit and after that, the Fregat booster started putting the smaller satellites into their designated orbits.
The Pars 1 spacecraft was made by the Iranian Space Research Center. The contract for its launch was signed as part of efforts to implement the Russian-Iranian agreements reached during Roscosmos Director General Yury Borisov’s meeting with head of the Iranian Space Agency Hassan Salarieh on the sidelines of the Iran Air Show 2022.