 Although it may only be the size of a mercury capsule, Iran is actually working to send a human into space on their own domestically built capsule. This is your space pod for April 2, 2015. So on Tuesday's pod I talked about the identical rocket programs of Iran and North Korea and I wanted to answer a couple of questions about that video first. First off, F-Cycles said, for Iran I wonder if the fact that their previous president Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, being in an engineer, could have helped also to fund some ambitious engineering projects. It's funny that you should mention that because the Iranian Space Agency used to be under direct control of the president's office during Ahmadinejad's administration. But ever since Rouhani took office he put it back in control of the ministry like it was before Ahmadinejad was president. This sparked a lot of rumors that the Iranian Space Agency was going to be canceled. However, those rumors have been quelled and a lot of official statements have come out saying that they are progressing forward full force. Iran has been working incrementally on not only the rockets that they need but also the life support systems they need to achieve manned space flight. And they've already launched a bunch of animals into space on suborbital flights with varying degrees of success. Their animals and space program started as the Kavushkar program, which means Explorer. And of the eight launches that have occurred for that so far, seven of them were launched on solid rockets. And what makes this kind of confusing is that the first launch of their liquid-fueled Saphir rocket was called the Kavushkar-1. But there was another Kavushkar-1 on one of these solid rockets, which is based off the Niveyat solid rocket missiles. This leads me to believe that the Kavushkar program is not a single rocket or mission type, but is kind of a general program for the kind of firsts in space, just like NASA's Explorer program. I'm not exactly sure when Kavushkar-1 actually launched, but Kavushkar-2 launched in November of 2008, with a small capsule testing their space lab and pressurized compartment for future flights with live animals. Kavushkar-3 launched on February 3, 2010, carrying a rodent, two turtles, and several worms, making them the sixth nation to ever launch an animal in the space. They're preceded by the Soviet Union, the United States, France, Argentina, China, and Japan. Kavushkar-4 launched on March 15, 2011, with two major upgrades. The rocket was a much larger solid rocket based on the Zelzahl missile, and it had an upgraded test capsule designed to carry a monkey into space. This capsule is called the Pishgon, and there weren't no live monkeys on this flight. Kavushkar-5 launched in September of 2011 on the same type of rocket with a live monkey, but the mission failed, although a few details have surfaced as to why. The monkey did not survive. During that failure, the Uranian Space Agency had to redesign their Pishgon capsule to ensure that they didn't have an accident again, which indicates that there was some sort of failure with the capsule, and possibly not the rocket. Presumably there was a Kavushkar-6 mission sometime in 2012, but it may have been an unannounced failure. There were a lot of rumors that spread that that particular rocket exploded on the pad. Kavushkar-7 launched on January 28, 2013, and they supposedly launched a rhesus monkey into suborbital space. This particular mission caused a lot of controversy, because the news media reported that there was pictures of one monkey before the mission, and then the pictures of the monkey after the mission were a completely different monkey. However, the Iranian news media showed all of the missions of including monkeys and the prior test subjects during their coverage, and didn't differentiate between which ones were which. They just showed it all at once, and so all the other media kind of mistranslated that. The monkey that had the particular mole above its eye was the one that was launched on Kavushkar-5, the one that did not survive. The other monkey without that distinctive mole was the one that launched on Kavushkar-7, and indeed did survive. They released footage later on showing the before, during, and after of that monkey during that mission. Kavushkar-8 was launched not too long ago on December 14th of 2014, and there was lots of upgrades for this mission. It was actually a Pishgon capsule launched atop the liquid-fueled first stage of a Saphir rocket, not the solid-fueled Zelzal rocket on the previous missions, and they called this rocket version the Kavushkar-Pazuhesh. What makes this rocket different from a Saphir is that it's only the first stage of the rocket. It does not have a liquid-fueled or solid-fueled upper stage. Finally, the most recent piece of news out of Iran is on February 17th of 2015, they revealed a mock-up of their one-person Mercury-class capsule, and have claimed to have been working on the heat shield, life support, and everything else needed to successfully launch a human into space, and safely return them to Earth. Rumors have been circulating about a bigger rocket that may debut this year that would be capable of launching a capsule like this, at least in a suborbital space. And it could be one of many different rocket projects slash ideas that the Iranian Space Agency is working on. The best thing to do is just to wait and see. Thank you for watching this Spacepod. My name is Michael Clark, and I loved reading your guys' comments on the video about Iran and North Korea's rockets. Sophia Teh-Trikht, I am so used to pronouncing it Iran instead of Iran. I apologize, hopefully I did better this time. Anyway, I would love to hear what you guys think about their human spaceflight program and what you think they should and need to do next in order to achieve their goals successfully. Don't forget to subscribe to our channel if you haven't already. And if you're interested in helping us to bring you content like this, then please visit patreon.com slash tmro to find out more information about how you can help to crowdfund this show. Thank you to everyone who's contributed so far. Every single penny helps and things are growing at an awesome pace and we're going to be able to talk about and do lots of really cool things in the future. So thank you everyone for making tomorrow happen.