Russia’s Soyuz rocket blasted an Iranian satellite called Khayyam from the Baikonur Launch Facility in Kazakhstan on Tuesday.

The Iranian satellite is named after a Persian scientist called Omar Khayyam, who lived in the 11th and 12th centuries.

Although there have been allegations that Russia could use it to monitor Ukraine as part of its military action there, Iran has said that no other country will have access to the information it has. it collects due to its encrypted algorithm.

Hailing the launch of the satellite as “an important step in Russian-Iranian bilateral cooperation”, Russian space chief Yuri Borissov said it will “pave the way for the implementation of new and even bigger projects”. .

See also | What Putin expects from Iran and why Tehran might be cautious

The satellite, which will remain fully under Iranian control, has been equipped with a high-resolution camera that will be used for environmental monitoring.

Calling the event a “turning point for the start of a new interaction in the field of space between our two countries”, Iranian Telecommunications Minister Issa Zarepour described the event as “historic”.

Iran’s Space Agency (ISA) said it had received the “first telemetry data” from the satellite, which will allow the country to monitor arch-enemy Israel and other countries in the Middle East.

It comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin, on one of his rare foreign trips since invading Moscow on February 24, met his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran last month.

It is not the first Iranian satellite that Russia has sent into space since the Plesetsk cosmodrome in Moscow deployed the Sina-1 satellite from Tehran in 2005.

(With agency contributions)

Watch live TV from WION here: