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The head of the Iran Space Agency (ISA) has claimed that his organisation is in talks with several European countries and Japan, as well as China and Russia, to explore the possibility of space cooperation.
Mohsen Barami also claimed that Iran is in discussions with several international satellite operators.
“We have capabilities and we are part of an international scene,” said Bahrami to Iranian journalists.
That Iran is establishing space cooperation relationships with China and Russia is already well-known. Tehran also has cooperative arrangements of varying scopes in place with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkey. What is new is the claim that the ISA is in discussions with several unnamed European countries, as well as with Japan. There is also a possibility that Iran is talking with South Korea about possible space cooperation.
It is also known, however, that Tehran has been talking with European commercial satellite communications provider Eutelsat about the possibility of leasing a communications satellite from them.
Additionally, it is believed that companies from China, France, Russia, and South Korea are interested in bidding on Iran’s National Communications Satellite (NCS) project.
It is believed that both Iran and Russia finalised the contract in late December 2016 for a Russian company to build and launch the Iranian National Remote Sensing Satellite (NRSS).
Original published at: http://spacewatchme.com/2017/01/iran-claims-talks-european-japanese-chinese-space-agencies-international-satellite-operators/
