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Iranian Monkey Makes Suborbital Flight (Update)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
December 16, 2013
Filed under ,

Iran hails voyage of Fargam the space monkey, Telegraph
“Iran said on Saturday that it had safely returned a monkey to Earth after blasting it into space in the second such launch this year in its controversial ballistic programme.
President Hassan Rouhani congratulated the scientists involved in the mission, in a message carried by the official IRNA news agency. The report added that the rocket reached a height of 120 kilometres (75 miles).”

Keith’s note: I am not at all certain what the point of flying this monkey was. When the U.S. and U.S.S.R. first did it in the 50s and 60s it was because no one knew exactly what would happen. Well, they found out and all of that research has been in the public sphere for half a century. The Iranians could have easily availed themselves of that research and avoided scaring they daylights out of this poor monkey.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

13 responses to “Iranian Monkey Makes Suborbital Flight (Update)”

  1. Reavenk says:
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    I love the shirt with what looks like a human sized name tag. I want to pretend in that picture that the little guy is at a press conference or news interview answering questions.

    • ProfSWhiplash says:
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      Ditto on the press conference… But then I’d also see it go badly when the little guy starts throwing his feces at reporters whose questions he found annoying.

  2. Joe Cooper says:
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    Like Ham!

    These are exciting times in space. Great work.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Great work? Really? Torturing a primate, scaring him silly, and for what? What is learned that isn’t revealed by a crash test dummy sensor? Ham was sent to space because in those days nobody knew basic things about the ability of animals in space- indeed, some wondered if swallowing in zero G was even possible. But now we know those things. This is nothing short of animal abuse.

      • Joe Cooper says:
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        Fair enough.

      • savuporo says:
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        Massive double standards. What “we” know is not exactly what iranians know. Just as many things that Chinese or Japanese researchers know are not things that “we” know – because of the language barrier.

        We did it before .. but it was _different_ .. kind of childish.

        • Joe Cooper says:
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          My initial thought was basically that, except also that we’ve continued to launch lord knows how many animals on space shuttles to, I guess, see how messed up they are by microgravity which is neither risk-free nor polite. But it does feel like two-wrongs territory and he’s basically correct.

    • Paul451 says:
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      Also, this would be more like the Able and Baker flights. Ham was a chimp, not a monkey, and flew in essentially a full Mercury capsule.

  3. Tom Sellick says:
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    He kinda looks like Ahmadinejad.

    • ProfSWhiplash says:
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      Not to infer anything about monkeys vs. Iranians…
      But yes he does!! Look closely, it’s that expression on his face. It looks dead-on, compared to many, many, news photos of Mr. A.

    • Joe Cooper says:
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      Well he did publicly volunteer (albeit rhetorically).

  4. ProfSWhiplash says:
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    [Dang!, The nano-sec I originally posted this, they go and swap ads]
    I found it ironically funny that on the homepage, directly above this wide-eyed fella’s photo is a google-ad featuring a hand holding a ripe banana.

  5. Rocky J says:
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    Hey, didn’t that monkey have a bit part in Bruce Almighty?