[1] Iran is one of the 24 founding members of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), which was set up on 13 December 1958.

[citation needed] ISA was established on 28 February 2004, according to the Article 9 of the Law for Tasks and Authorizations of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology passed on 10 December 2003 by the Parliament of Iran.

The president of ISA held the position of the Vice-Minister of Communications and Information Technology and the secretariat of Supreme Council of Space at the same time.

According to the technical documentation presented in the annual meeting of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, it is a two-stage rocket with all liquid propellant engines.

[8] The Safir-1B is the second generation of Safir SLV and can carry a satellite weighing 60 kg into an elliptical orbit of 300 to 450 km.

[14] On 2 February 2013, the head of the Iranian Space Agency, Hamid Fazeli mentioned that the new satellite launch vehicle, Qoqnoos will be used after the Simorgh SLV for heavier payloads.

[citation needed] On 17 August 2008, Iran proceeded with the second test launch of a two-stage Safir SLV from a site south of Semnan city in the northern part of the Dasht-e-Kavir desert.

In February 2011, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that there will be many launches of indigenously produced orbiters in 2011–2012 period.

[19] On 25 February 2007, the Iranian state-run television announced that a rocket, created by the ministries of science and defense and which carried an unspecified cargo, was successfully launched.

Later on it was noted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the failure was due to a technical problem in the last stage of the rocket.

[103] In June 2013, Iran inaugurated its first space monitoring center located near Delijan in Markazi province, according to Iran's Defense Minister General Ahmad Vahidi the new center which was named Imam Ja'far Sadeq would mostly be used to track and detect space objects and satellites passing overhead using radar, electro-optic and radio systems.

[106] Iran expressed for the first time its intention to send a human to space during the summit of Soviet and Iranian Presidents at 21 June 1990.

This goal was described as the country's top priority for the next 10 years, in order to make Iran the leading space power of the region by 2021.

Iranian state media did not report on the incident and the entire manned space program was put on hold.

[111] On 17 February 2015, Iran unveiled a mock prototype of crewed spaceship that would be capable of taking astronauts into space.

[114] On 6 December 2023, Iran resumed launching live animals into space in a capsule mounted on a new type of rocket called "Salman".

There the journalists had a press conference with representatives from the Iranian Space Agency who touted that they were planning on sending a human to the moon by 2025.

This was met by immediate skepticism as Iran's launch capabilities at this time, and as of 2012[update], are limited to small payloads to low earth orbit.

[122][123][124][125][126][127][128] For Radio Free Europe, independent experts interviewed disagreed with assertion made by the U.S. and various European countries.