Islamic Republic Working on Two Satellite Launch Vehicles

The Islamic Republic has initiated two projects to develop more advanced satellite launch vehicles, Iran Space Agency’s chief says.
Morteza Barari also detailed the program in a talk with Financial Tribune on the sidelines of an event held in Tehran on Monday to mark the 11th anniversary of Iran’s first successful satellite launch.
According to Barari, two Iranian SLV projects are in the pipeline and the rockets are named Sarir and Soroush.
Barari said Sarir can carry a payload of over 500 kg up to an altitude of 1,000 km, adding that the SLV’s length and diameter would respectively be 35 and 2.4 meters.
“The second SLV, which will be developed in the more distant future, called Soroush would be able to carry a payload of over 1,000 kg up to an altitude of 36,000 km,” he added. 
Soroush would be a liquid-propellant rocket with a diameter of 4 meters.
The space agency’s director also said Iran is establishing a data center where information harvested by satellites would be stored and offered to startups and tech firms. 
According to Barari, the agency is implementing an open API approach.
API, or Application Programming Interface, is a package of codes that may or may not do a task independently. A well-designed API makes it easier to develop a computer program by providing all the building blocks, which are then put together by programmers. The code packages are highly likely to be accessible through a website.
Other speaker at the event was the manager of satellite Omid, Hossein Shahrabi Farahani, which was launched in 2009. Omid, a data-processing satellite, was Iran's first domestically-made satellite.