Iran is studying the possibility of sending a astronaut into space, the head of Iran’s Aerospace Research Institute said.
Fathollah Ommi says “The space agency is considering the possibility of launching a space program with an astronaut aboard the spacecraft,” IRIB News reported.
The program will be carried out in two phases, he said.
The first involves a sub-orbital spaceflight and the second (supposedly operational by 2025) will be an orbit launch.
A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that it does not complete one orbital revolution.
An orbital spaceflight is a flight in which a spacecraft is placed on a trajectory where it can remain in space for at least one orbit. According to the ARI chief, the institute will send a robot or a live specimen into space before launching the human flight.
Iran has said that it sent a monkey into space in 2013 with the flight returning to Earth with the monkey alive.
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