Re: What Made My Day Today? :-)

- A physics lab in Iran is to place two private satellites in orbit. Both will measure various physical quantities up there. May also look down to see things. They're not tied to any military or militia entity directly. But ... I doubt government hasn't sponsored at least part of that lab's costs. Perhaps that part of what the lab owes is paid by having a few reconnaissance instruments on them as well, watching warships and cargo ships closely for Houthis.
"Kowsar", one of them, has a camera with resolution of reported 3.45 meters from a 500 km altitude. It can be a downplayed number though, to avert attention for other military uses, but even at that resolution it is good enough for identifying ships :)
Other uses of this camera will be agriculture, geographical mapping, and reporting violators of Iran's sea borders, which to this day happens relatively often by both American and British ships. This kind of show off play will be over in a few months.
It has a sure two-year lifetime, and will be replaced with newer ones when the old ones become problematic.
Cost of building them is minimal, cost of launch is based on amicable agreement with Russians, and one day not too far into future Iran will launch them herself. I can guess that like anything else that Iran does and builds and develops, they've found an optimum way of doing a maximum number of tasks efficiently, with the least cost and trouble. It is not a rip off instrument.
This is one of them:
https://i.postimg.cc/15BBNyPM/Kosar-satellite.jpg
It is a little bitty thing, only 30 kg. But packed with measuring and other instruments. The other one to some extent will share the work up there with this one, but otherwise has its own unique instruments, thus has a different name.
Iran is also providing a "Moon rover" and a Moon orbiter for a Chinese project that they recently offered as help for countries who want to learn and catch up with the related science and technology; 10 countries competed for it and Iran won!
These are nice exercises before Iranians begin doing stuff all on their own. Kudos to China and Iran both.