MNA � Chancellor of Amirkabir University Ahmad Motamedi said Payam satellite plummeted into the Indian Ocean, after it failed to reach orbit at the final stage of the launch.

Referring to the latest status of Payam satellite, launched successfully yesterday with the Simorgh satellite carrier, but unfortunately failed to be placed into the orbit, Motamedi described as "favorable" the technical performance of the satellite, underlining that "Payam was sending out signals from the space for about 6 minutes, indicating that the satellite works fine."

Pointing to the current location of the satellite, he said "according to GPS data active until the last minute, Payam fell into Indian Ocian, after failure to be located into the orbit."

Regarding the reasons behind the failure to put Payam satellite into orbit at 500 kilometers altitude, Chancellor of Amirkabir University said "the launcher had not correctly calculated the initial speed of the satellite."

He also pointed to fuel-related issues as another reason for the failure in putting the satellite into the orbit. Motamedi added that the satellite did not have any problem regarding its launch direction and flight.

"Given the order by Minister of Information and Communications Technology Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi to design and build the next satellite, named 'Payam 2', our team of scientists will prepare it for launch in less than a year, thanks to the technical knowledge we have now acquired," he stressed.

Iran successfully launched domestically-built satellite, 'Payam', into space yesterday, however, technical problems that occurred during the final stage of the launch prevented the spacecraft from reaching orbit.

Payam (meaning �message� in Persian) was designed and developed by experts of Amirkabir University of Technology to carry out imagery and telecommunication missions. It was aimed to orbit the Earth at an altitude of 500 kilometers to take surveying images at high resolutions.