Iran plans to send a new home-made satellite into the space by the next few days, a senior Iranian space research official announced on Saturday.

Addressing a gathering in Iran's Northeastern city of Mashhad, Head of the Space System Research Center Mohammad Ebrahimi praised Iran's achievements in space fields, and said now the world knows Iran as "a country with space technologies".

He said Iran has so far launched several satellites into orbit and achieved the technology to build satellite-carriers and has successfully sent living creatures into the space.

As regards Iran's future space programs, Ebrahimi said the country will launch a new satellite into space by the next few days and will be able to send man into space by the next five years.

Earlier this month, Iran's Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said sending a biocapsule to the space and retrieving it successfully was Iran's first step on the path to sending a human to the space after his agency announced that it had sent a monkey to the orbit, brought it back to the Earth and retrieved the animal and the relevant data successfully.

On January 28, the Defense Ministry's Aerospace Industries Organization announced that it has sent a monkey into the space on the back of Pishgam (Pioneer) explorer rocket, and that it has brought back and recovered the living cargo.

The Aerospace Industries Organization said it had sent the living creature into space aboard an indigenous biocapsule as a prelude to sending humans into space.

The Aerospace Industries Organization said the capsule was sent to an orbit beyond 120km in altitude and carried out telemetry of the environmental data records.

The explorer rocket was launched by the Aerospace Industries Organization and it returned to the Earth after reaching the desired speed and altitude, and the living creature (monkey) was retrieved and found alive.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had announced in 2010 that Iran plans to send astronauts into space in 2024. But, later he said that the issue had gone under a second study at a cabinet meeting and that the cabinet had decided to implement the plan in 2019, five years earlier than the date envisaged in the original plan.