TEHRAN: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards launched a research satellite Saturday, a minister said, putting it into a higher orbit in a new milestone for its aerospace programme that has faced Western criticism.The United States has repeatedly warned Iran against such launches, saying the same technology can be used for ballistic missiles, including ones designed to deliver a nuclear warhead.The Islamic republic says its satellite and rocket launches are only for civil or defence purposes, denying any ambition to develop a nuclear weapons capability.”The Soraya satellite of the Iranian Space Organisation… was successfully launched with the Ghaem-100 satellite carrier of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” the official IRNA news agency said.”This is the first time that Iran has successfully placed a satellite in orbits higher than 500 kilometres (310 miles),” IRNA said.The news agency cited Telecommunications Minister Issa Zarepour as saying that the satellite, which weighs about 50 kilograms (110 pounds), was put in orbit 750 kilometres above Earth.
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