Remember our story sometime in the middle of this month concerning how Iran will be sending a monkey to space as part of their space program? Well, instead of the original February “launch date”, it seemed that the monkey already made its way to space in January, and even more miraculous is, the monkey in space has been retrieved with success, with much relief to our simian friend, I suppose.
This marks the first step in the country of Iran to eventually send a man into space. The Kavoshgar rocket which carried the capsule that was called Pishgam or Pioneer, where the monkey traveled in, was launched recently, hitting a height of 120km with the capsule returning undamaged. Iran’s Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi claimed that the “passenger” was retrieved “alive and in good health.”
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did say that this scientific achievement is a miracle. Thing is, it can be rather difficult for the world to see this move as a peaceful one, considering the kind of hostile rhetoric that has been shared across different platforms for some time now concerning their nuclear program with space projects that could potentially have military applications.