This follows a planned attempt last fall that failed and apparently resulted in the monkey being killed.
The monkey capsule will fly atop a Kavoshgar sounding rocket. This is not an effort to put the animal into orbit. A sounding rocket just goes straight up and falls straight back to earth. It doesn’t curve around the arc of the earth like rockets putting satellites into orbit.
The Kavoshgar can reach a maximum altitude of 130 kilometers (80 miles), Iran says.
This will the sixth known launching of a Kavoshgar, which seems to be suffering problems, although it is now more than four years old.
Kavoshgar 1 was launched in February 2008. It was a test shot only to check out the missile.
Kavoshgar 2 was launched in November 2008. The Space Agency produced a photo showing how the nosecone had been parachuted safely back to earth. It said the nosecone would be used to carry living organisms into space as part of Iran’s effort to put a man into orbit by 2019.
Kavoshgar 3 was launched in February 2010. It carried a rat, two turtles and some worms. Iran said it landed safely. But unlike after Kavoshgar 2, the Space Agency released no photos of the nosecone or animals post-flight, prompting some doubts.
Kavoshgar 4 was launched in March 2011. The launch was only announced two days afterward, not the normal hours afterward. There were no photos released afterward and no claims that any animals were on board, which prompted questions as to why the program appeared to be taking a step backward to just testing the missile itself.
Kavoshgar 5 was launched in August 2011. Weeks beforehand, officials had said the rocket would carry a monkey. But no announcement was made until October, two months after the launch, when an official said the rocket “had not achieved all its objectives.” It appeared to many that the rocket had achieved none of its objectives if the regime was being so slow to speak. There was speculation, but no evidence, that the rocket may have exploded on the launch pad.
Officially, that Kavoshgar 5 has ceased to exist as the launch planned for the next few weeks in being identified as Kavoshgar 5. And Hamid Fazeli, the head of the Space Agency, says this rocket will carry a monkey. PressTV quoted Fazeli as saying the unnamed monkey had been in “training over the past year.”
The first living creature launched into space was a Russian dog, Laika, who was fired into orbit more than a half-century ago in November 1957 aboard the second Soviet satellite. Information on her heart rate and other reactions to the launch were radioed back to earth. But there was no way to return her to earth and Laika died in orbit.