Pishgam (Persian: پیشگام, "pioneer") is an Iranian 300-kilogramme[1] space capsule and associated rocket (کاوشگر پیشگام Kavoshgar-Pishgam "Explorer-Pioneer"), which launched containing rhesus monkey and is part of a series of Iranian rocket launches containing biological cargo intended as precursors to human spaceflight.
The sounding rocket plus return capsule combination are capable of undertaking a twenty-minute flight and reach a height of 120 km.
[2] This is a sub-orbital flight not similar to the Safir rocket which launched Omid, a domestically-built data-processing satellite into low Earth orbit.
[3] On February 3, 2010, ISA launched a Kavoshgar-3 (Explorer-3) rocket with one rodent, two turtles, and several worms into sub-orbital space and returned them to Earth alive.
The Aerospace Research Institute (ARI) showed live video transmission of mini-environmental lab to enable further studies on the biological capsule.