TEHRAN – One of two official packages of photos of Iran’s famed simian space traveler depicted the wrong monkey, but a primate really did fly into space and return safely to Earth, a senior Iranian space official said Saturday.
The two different monkeys shown in the photos released by Iran’s state media caused some international observers to wonder whether the monkey had died in space or that the launch didn’t go well.
One set of pictures showed a relatively dark-haired monkey. Another showed a different monkey — strapped in a pod — that had light gray hair and a distinctive red mole over its right eye.
Mohammad Ebrahimi said the monkey who traveled in space was named Pishgam, the Farsi word for pioneer. Initially, the Iranian media said Pishgam was the rocket that took him on a 20-minute journey into space on Monday. Ebrahimi said one set of pictures showed an archive photo of one of the alternate monkeys. He said three to five monkeys are simultaneously tested for such a flight and two or three are chosen for the launch. Finally, the one that is best suited for the mission is chosen for the voyage.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer who tracks rocket launchings and space activity, also said last week’s monkey space flight was real, but he had a slightly different explanation for the photo mixup. He claimed the light gray monkey with the mole died during a failed space mission in 2011. “The monkey with the mole was the one launched in 2011 that died. The rocket failed. It did not get into space,” McDowell said. “They just mixed that footage with the footage of the 2013 successful launch.”
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