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Azerbaijan and Iran have concluded negotiations on space cooperation, to include the Iranian use of Azerbaijani communications satellites and the joint development of a remote sensing satellite, according Azerbaijani media reports.
“We are currently holding negotiations on Iran’s use of satellites belonging to Azerbaijan. In addition, Iran has a satellite production technology. We can cooperate with Azerbaijan in this field. Our proposal is to make satellite with the scientific research of both countries,” Javad Azeri Jahromi, Iran’s minister for communications and information technology, told Azerbaijan’s Trend News Agency.
“Currently, Iran and Azerbaijan also cooperate in the field of postal communication, and we also intend to develop these relations. In the future, we also envisage expansion of cooperation in the field of postal financial services,” Jahromi added.
The discussions also included the joint Azerbaijani-Iranian construction of the TASİM fiber-optic cable that would provide another means of telecommunications connectivity between the two countries.
Azerbaijan, through its AzerCosmos state space corporation, operates the AzerSpace-1 and AzerSpace-2 communications satellites, and the high-resolution AzerSky Earth observation satellite. All three satellites are built by either U.S. or European satellite manufacturers.
Iran is reportedly a user of AzerSky satellite imagery, as previously reported by SpaceWatch.Global.
These latest negotiations follow the space cooperation Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by the two countries in August 2016 that placed the Iranian use of Azerbaijani communications satellites on the agenda.
