geekosystem

Iran's Mehr News agency is reporting that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has volunteered to be the first Iranian citizen launched into space. Say what you will about Ahmadinejad, who is a world-class jag by pretty much any metric you might care to use, but that's a pretty brave move, considering there are significant questions about whether Iran is even capable of launching a monkey into space and retrieving it safely. Representatives of the U.S. government have already responded to Ahmadinejad's orbital aspirations through the accepted diplomatic channels, which in this case is apparently "monkey joke on Twitter."

Reuters is reporting that the aerospace arm of Iran's defense ministry has successfully launched a monkey into space and retrieved it alive, thereby pushing Iran's young space program leaps and bounds forward, all the way into the 1950s. We would say welcome to the party, Iran, but frankly, the idea of you having rockets really just makes everyone uncomfortable, so... come in if you have to, I guess?

Any sort of travel can stress out your immune system, expose you to unfamiliar bugs, and generally make you more likely to get sick. Take it from a guy on what is now officially on week two of a plane flight induced common cold. A study published in The FASEB Journal suggests that space travel could wreak even more havoc on the immune system, even changing the way the immune system develops in embryonic animals.