MNA – Minister of Communications and Information Technology Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi says Iran’s Dousti Satellite is ready to launch, awaiting the permission of the Ministry of Defense.

Addressing the inauguration ceremony of an ICT park in Mashhad on Monday, Jahromi said the necessary maintenance and launch tests of Dousti have been successfully carried out, and the device will join the orbit in near future.

Meaning “friendship” in Persian, ‘Dousti’ is a micro-class 52-kilogram satellite developed by the experts from Sharif University of Technology.

It is a remote-sensing satellite, which will orbit the Earth at an altitude of between 250 km and 310 km, commonly known as Low Earth Orbit.

The news comes after another domestically-manufactured satellite, Payam, failed to rich the orbit in mid-January.

After the unsuccessful launch, Jahromi promised that domestic scientists would continue their hard work to launch Dousti in near future and start the work on developing Payam 2.

Iran has successfully launched other satellites into orbit with the country’s Safir-1, Safir-1A and Safir-1B rockets.

The satellites made in Iran so far have been remote sensing satellites, while the efforts for producing local telecoms satellites began three years ago.