Iran May Launch Another Monkey Into Space

Iran is planning to launch another monkey into space soon, according to media reports.

The Iranian newspaper Jomhuri Eslami reported Sunday that the Islamic Republic aims to blast a monkey into space sometime in the next month, according to the French news agency AFP. The liftoff would help advance the nation's stated plans to put a human in space by 2018, Iranian officials said.

The liftoff wouldn't be Iran's first simian suborbital space mission. A 2011 attempt failed, but then the Islamic Republic claimed in January of this year that it had lofted and safely recovered a monkey after a brief suborbital flight. Read more...