Iran’s Guards claim successful military satellite launch

A military satellite was launched by Iran into orbit on Wednesday after months of failures, according to the Revolutionary Guards official website. This was not independently confirmed. The two-stage satellite called “Noor” was said to have reached an orbit of 425km above Earth after taking off from an unnamed site in Iran’s Central Desert. It was put into space by a hitherto unknown system called Ghased (Messenger). Western governments have suspected that these launches aim at helping Iran develop international ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. They all failed until Wednesday, including the latest in February which fell short of putting the Zafar 1 communications satellite into orbit.