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In a world of fast fashion, upcycling clothes is a growing trend. If a tweet by the Iranian Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi, is anything to go by, it appears that the Iranian Space Agency have also caught on.
On February 4th, 2020, the Minister tweeted the words “space suit #bright_future” followed by an image of a garment, purportedly for future Iranian astronauts. However, it did not take long for other Twitter users to determine that the suit was in fact a modified version of a $20 NASA child’s costume.
How could they tell? Well the outlines of a rectangle and circle across the chest of the Iranian suit correlate to the fake NASA patches on the child’s costume. Once you see it, you cannot un-see it.
The tweet, which has since been deleted, was posted a few hours before Jahromi told a group of students of plans for Iran to plant a flag on the moon. Therefore, the opportunity of trying Iran’s new suit on the Apollo 11 astronauts was not passed up.
More helpful tweets suggested additions to the outfit, including some sparkly children’s shoes and a toy spaceship.
The former intelligence officer’s tweet was posted ahead of a satellite launch on Sunday to celebrate the 41st anniversary of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. However, the rocket launch, 230 kilometers (145 miles) southeast of Iran’s capital, Tehran, failed to put the Zafar 1 communications satellite into orbit due to low speed, state television reported.
This latest setback for the Iran Space Program follows a period of launch failures last year. In January 2019, the Payam satellite failed to reach orbit, and a month later the rocket carrying the Doosti satellite also reportedly faltered just after liftoff. Adding to this string of problems, last August a rocket explosion on the launch-pad at Imam Khomeini Space Center was spotted from space.
Since its formation in 2004, Iran’s space agency has launched satellites and monkeys into space. The US have claimed that these satellite launches could help Tehran advance its ballistic missile program. The series of failures last year also raised suspicion of outside interference, exacerbated by Donald Trump’s tweet that the US “was not involved in the catastrophic accident,” that happened in August.
Amid international tensions following the killing of General Qassem Soleimani and a ballistic missile strike on American troops in Iraqi bases, Iran also unveiled a new ballistic missile on Sunday.
