Iran's Satellites, Every Spacecraft in Orbit and Who Launched Them

Iran has 15 satellites in orbit as of October 2026. Ten of them went up on Russian rockets, and five on Iran’s own Simorgh and Qaem-100 launchers. KeepTrack’s catalog files 14 Iranian objects in orbit, a figure that includes spent Iranian rocket stages and leaves out the four satellites Iran launched on Russian Soyuz rockets in 2025 (Nahid-2, Paya, Zafar-2 and Kowsar 1.5), which the catalog does not yet tag to Iran. Most of the satellites Iran has launched on its own rockets have already fallen back to Earth.

The rest of this page lists every Iranian spacecraft still up there, explains the split between the civilian program and the Revolutionary Guard’s, and covers why every Iranian launch draws a sanctions argument.

How many satellites does Iran have?

Iran has 15 satellites in orbit as of October 2026. The Iran hub page shows the catalog’s live totals, which stand at 36 objects ever cataloged under Iran’s codes, 14 still in orbit, and 20 reentered. Those totals mix satellites with rocket stages and unidentified launch pieces, so the satellite count in the table below is the cleaner answer.

How many of the 15 work is harder to say. The catalog flags most of them as active, but Iran publishes little its satellites after launch, and several are cubesats with short design lives.

The four 2025 satellites appear in the GCAT launch records for launch 2025-155 and launch 2025-313 . Their catalog entries carry no Iranian country code yet, and Nahid-2 and Zafar-2 still sit under other names, so those two are listed without a satellite page link.

Iran became an orbital launch power on February 2, 2009, when a Safir rocket from Semnan put the small Omid satellite into orbit. Rasad, Navid and Fajr followed on Safirs between 2011 and 2015. Every one of them reentered within three months. Low orbits and small satellites meant short lives, and that pattern still holds for most domestic launches.

Two organizations now run Iranian launches. The civilian Iranian Space Agency flies the liquid-fueled Simorgh from the Imam Khomeini Spaceport near Semnan. After a string of failures, Simorgh reached orbit on January 28, 2024, with Mahda, Kayhan-2 and Hatef-1, Iran’s first successful multi-satellite launch. A December 2024 Simorgh flight carried the Fakhr-1 cubesat and Saman-1, a prototype kick stage, and both reentered in 2025.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) runs its own program from a base near Shahroud. Its Qased rocket launched the Noor military satellites, and its newer solid-fueled Qaem-100 put Soraya into orbit on January 20, 2024, and Chamran-1 on September 14, 2024. Soraya reached a roughly 750 km orbit, the highest any Iranian launcher had achieved.

KeepTrack catalog as of October 2026. Live table and launch history .

The IRGC surprised Western analysts on April 22, 2020, when a previously unknown Qased rocket put Noor-1 in orbit, the Guard’s first military satellite. Noor-2 followed on March 8, 2022, and Noor-3 on September 27, 2023. All three were small cubesats, light enough for a three-stage rocket built partly from missile technology, and their imaging resolution was never independently confirmed.

None of them is still up. The catalog shows Noor-1 reentering on April 13, 2022, Noor-2 on May 17, 2024, and Noor-3 on August 16, 2024. As of October 2026 the IRGC has no satellite of its own in orbit, though its Qaem-100 rocket has launched satellites for other Iranian agencies.

Khayyam and the Russian connection

Iran’s most capable satellite came from Russia. Khayyam launched on a Soyuz-2.1b from Baikonur on August 9, 2022. The catalog lists it on a Kanopus bus, the platform Russia uses for its own Earth-observation satellites, with a launch mass of 650 kg. Al Jazeera, reporting the launch, noted that the Washington Post had cited Western intelligence officials who said Russia planned to use the satellite “for months or longer” to support its war in Ukraine. The Iranian Space Agency said Iran would control it “from day one.”

Since 2024, Soyuz rockets from Vostochny have carried Iranian satellites as rideshare passengers four times, launching Pars-1, Kowsar, Hodhod, Nahid-2, Zafar-2, Paya and Kowsar 1.5. In February 2026 a Proton-M from Baikonur carried Jam-e Jam 1, a broadcasting satellite for the state broadcaster IRIB, alongside Russia’s Elektro-L No. 5 weather satellite. It is Iran’s only satellite in geostationary orbit. We covered the private side of this traffic in our Kowsar 1.5 deep-dive .

Russian rockets launched 10 of Iran’s 15 satellites in orbit, including its most capable imager, Khayyam, and its only geostationary satellite, Jam-e Jam 1. Iran’s own launchers have put five satellites in orbit that are still up, all in 2024.

Sanctions and the missile question

Every Iranian launch revives the same dispute. The rocket stages that put a small satellite into orbit are close cousins of the stages on a long-range ballistic missile, which is why the United States and European governments have long called Iran’s launches inconsistent with UN Security Council Resolution 2231. When Iran launched Chamran-1, Al Jazeera noted the Western position that the technology “can be used for ballistic missiles, including ones designed to deliver a nuclear warhead.” Iran says its program is civilian and its right under international law.

The legal ground shifted in 2025. The missile-related restrictions under Resolution 2231 had lapsed in October 2023. On August 28, 2025, France, Germany and the United Kingdom wrote to the Security Council to trigger the “snapback” mechanism that restores earlier UN sanctions on Iran. Those sanctions came back into force on September 28, 2025. After the December 2025 Soyuz launch, AP reported that “The United States has said that Iran’s satellite launches defy a U.N. Security Council resolution.” Launching from Russia does not settle that dispute, but it does move the rocket question out of Iran.

On the record so far, Iran’s domestic launchers flew four successful missions in 2024 and none in 2025, and most of what they carry reenters within months. The satellites Iran depends on for imaging and communications ride Russian rockets, and that cooperation has grown every year since 2022. As of late October 2026, KeepTrack’s launch records show no Iranian domestic orbital launch this year. The last attempt, a Zoljanah rocket from Semnan on September 18, 2025, appears to have failed to reach orbit, and Iran did not acknowledge it. The Simorgh or Qaem-100 flight is the event to watch, because it is the one that tests both Iran’s rockets and the sanctions argument.

Iran has 15 satellites in orbit as of October 2026, 10 of them launched on Russian rockets. KeepTrack's catalog counts a different number of Iranian objects because it includes rocket stages and has not yet tagged the four satellites launched from Russia in 2025 to Iran.

Sina-1, built in Russia, launched on a Russian Kosmos-3M from Plesetsk on October 27, 2005, and is still in orbit. Iran's first satellite on its own rocket was Omid, launched by a Safir on February 2, 2009.

The IRGC launched three Noor military cubesats between 2020 and 2023, and all three had reentered by August 2024. Khayyam, a Russian-built imaging satellite launched in 2022, is Iran's most capable imager.

Russian rockets can place heavier satellites in longer-lived orbits than Iran's own launchers. Since 2022 Russia has launched nine Iranian satellites, and the ties between the two countries have deepened during the war in Ukraine.

Yes. Jam-e Jam 1, a broadcasting satellite for the state broadcaster IRIB, launched on a Russian Proton-M on February 12, 2026, and is Iran's only geostationary satellite as of October 2026.

Russia launches Iranian satellite into space from Kazakhstan base - Al Jazeera, August 9 2022

Iran launches new research satellite Chamran-1 into orbit - Al Jazeera, September 14 2024

Iran's IRGC successfully puts third imaging satellite into orbit - Al Jazeera, September 27 2023

Russia sends 3 Iranian satellites into orbit, report says - AP via WUSF, December 28 2025

Russian rocket takes Iranian satellites into orbit as ties grow closer - Al Jazeera, November 2024

Russian rocket launches Iran satellite into space, Iranian media say - Al Jazeera, July 2025

E3 foreign ministers' letter announcing triggering of snapback - GOV.UK, August 28 2025

UN Security Council Resolutions on Iran - Arms Control Association

Elektro-L No. 5 and Jam-e Jam 1 on Proton-M - RussianSpaceWeb

Launch 2022-096, Soyuz-2.1b with Khayyam - KeepTrack launch record (GCAT)

Launch 2024-018, Simorgh with Mahda, Kayhan-2 and Hatef-1 - KeepTrack launch record (GCAT)

Launch 2026-028, Proton-M with Elektro-L No. 5 and Jam-e Jam 1 - KeepTrack launch record (GCAT)

GCAT, General Catalog of Artificial Space Objects - Jonathan McDowell, planet4589.org

Theodore 'TK' Kruczek is a radar analyst and former Air Force Major specializing in Space Operations. He is passionate open-source projects, coding, craft beer, and writing. TK is the creator of KeepTrack.Space and has developed tools like the Orbital Object Toolkit and SignalRange .

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