Iranian Monkey Business

The Khomeinists are very proud of their simian astronaut. His name: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

Iran's successfully given a live monkey a round trip into space, the country's Al-Alam television channel reports.

"Iran successfully launched a capsule, codenamed Pishgam [Pioneer], containing a monkey and recovered the shipment on the ground intact," the report cited the defence ministry's aerospace department as saying.

It claimed that the monkey was launched into space on a Kavoshgar rocket on a sub-orbital flight last week. It reached a height of 75 miles, was successfully retrieved, and was still alive, it said.

Iran claims that it's previously been successful in sending a rat, turtles and worms into space - but an attempt to send a monkey to space in summer 2011 failed, for reasons that were never explained.

It also claims - rather less credibly - to have built a functional flying saucer...

Now, if it claimed to have built a functional flying carpet, that would be impressive.