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The Iranian Space Agency has taken its first step towards the launch of an indigenous remote sensing capability. On 2 February, it launched a store and forward communications satellite called Omid (meaning hope in Farsi).

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It is the first Iranian-built satellite to be lifted by a domestic launcher, which puts Iran in the club of nine countries that have their own satellite launching and manufacturing capacities. The former Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik-1, in October 1957. The last country to achieve this goal was Israel in 1988.

Work on the design of Omid began in February 2006. The satellite is a cube 40 cm on a side. It has a mass of 27 kg.

Its orbital period is 90.7 minutes with an inclination of 55.71 degrees. Omid's apogee is 381.2 kilometres; perigee is 245.5 kilometres.

Omid is designed with passive thermal control. It has no attitude control.

According to an article published by Parviz Tarikhi – a former head of the Iranian Space Agency's Office for Specialised International Co-operation – in Australian surveying, mapping and geospatial magazine, Position, Omid's mission was concluded on 24 March 2009, 50 days after its launch.

Re-entry of the satellite to the atmosphere has not been officially announced, but calculations suggest that Omid entered the atmosphere mid-April. The second stage of the Safir-2 would decay before the end of May.

One side effect of the mission was the creation of a satellite tracking system. The ground station network includes three tracking, telemetry and command stations, and one central flight control station. Additionally, there are four ranging stations and the ground receiving stations and terminals. Telemetry coding and decoding systems have also been built.

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