Iran unveils new home-made communication satellites

This file photo released June 16, 2011, shows launching the Safir, or Ambassador, satellite carrier, which carries Iran's Rasad, or Observation, satellite into earth orbit. Credit: Alalam news

Iran on Monday unveiled two domestically-made communication satellites, one to bolster its wireless connections and the other capable of taking high-resolution pictures, media reported.

Iran's space programme has prompted concern among Western governments, which fear Tehran is trying to master the technology required to deliver a nuclear warhead.

The Islamic republic insists that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful and denies its space programme is linked in any way to its disputed nuclear ambitions.

The state-run IRNA news agency named the two satellites as Khalije Fars (Persian Gulf) and Tadbir (wisdom) and said they were built by scientists at local universities.

"Khalije Fars, designed and manufactured by researchers at Malek Ashtar University, is a small satellite which provides secure satellite wireless connections at national or regional scope," IRNA said.

"Tadbir was built by Tehran's University of Science and Industry and is capable of conducting photographic assignments with a resolution of 100 meters (yards)," the agency added.

The deputy head of Iran's space agency, Hamid Fazeli, meanwhile told Fars news agency that the Islamic republic will launch a satellite into orbit by the end of the Iranian year, which ends on March 21.

Fazeli said that Tadbir is among a number of satellites that are ready to be launched into space. He did not give further details.

In December, Iran said that it had safely returned a monkey to Earth after blasting it into space in the second such launch.

An earlier attempt had failed in September 2011.

Iran has already launched three satellites into space since 2009 and plans to send a human into orbit by 2020.

'Cold fusion' moves closer to mainstream acceptance

'Cold fusion' moves closer to mainstream acceptance ScienceBlog.com

"Years ago, many scientists were afraid to speak about 'cold fusion' to a mainstream audience," said Jan Marwan, Ph.D., the internationally known expert who has organised the 'New Energy Technology' symposium.

Marwan heads the research firm, Dr. Marwan Chemie in Berlin, Germany. The symposium will include nearly 50 presentations describing the latest discoveries on the topic, including cold fusion.

The presentations describe invention of an inexpensive new measuring device that could enable more labs to begin cold fusion research; indications that cold fusion may occur naturally in certain bacteria; progress toward a battery based on cold fusion; and a range of other topics.

Marwan noted that many of the presentations suggest that cold fusion is real, with the potential to positively contribute to alternative energy supplies in the 21st Century.

"Now most of the scientists are no longer afraid and most of the cold fusion researchers are attracted to the ACS meeting," Marwan said. "I've also noticed that the field is gaining new researchers from universities that had previously not pursued cold fusion research. More and more people are becoming interested in it.

Clearly, there's still some resistance to this field but we just have to keep on as we have done so far, exploring cold fusion step by step, and that will make it a successful alternative energy source. With time and patience, I'm really optimistic we can do this!"

The term "cold fusion" originated in 1989 when Martin Fleishmann and Stanley Pons claimed achieving nuclear fusion at room temperature with a simple, inexpensive tabletop device.

That claim created an international sensation, because nuclear fusion holds the potential for providing our world with a virtually limitless and arguably, clean, new source of energy.

Fuel for fusion comes from ordinary seawater, and estimates indicate that 1 gallon of seawater packs the energy equivalent of 16 gallons of gasoline at 100 percent efficiency for energy production.

The claim also ignited scepticism, because conventional wisdom said that achieving fusion required multi-billion-dollar fusion reactors that operate at tens of millions of degrees Fahrenheit.

When other scientists could not reproduce the Pons-Fleishmann results, research on cold fusion fell into disrepute.

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