NASA Considering Space Station for Mars Dry Run

By Marcia Dunn

Cape Canaveral - The International Space Station may provide the setting for a 500-day pretend trip to Mars in another few years.

NASA said Tuesday that consideration is under way to use the space station as a dry run for a simulated trip to and from Mars.

It would be patterned after Russia's mock flight to Mars that lasted 520 days at a Moscow research center. Six men were involved in that study, which ended late last year. They were locked in a steel capsule.

NASA's space station program manager Mike Suffredini said before astronauts can fly beyond low-Earth orbit, they'll have to spend more than six months aloft at a time. That's the typical stint for space station crews. Five hundred days is more than 16 months.

The human endurance record of 14 months was set by a Russian cosmonaut aboard the Mir space station in the mid-1990s. Only two others — both Russians — have spent as long as a full year in space.

No NASA astronaut has spent more than seven months in space on a single mission.

Suffredini doesn't expect any such Mars simulation aboard the space station to occur any sooner than two to three years. Physical as well as psychological questions will have to be addressed before anything of that sort is attempted, he said.

Steps are under way, however, for such an effort, and scientists and flight surgeons already are working on it. The goal would be to have all the data in hand so the space station can be used as a Mars test bed before its projected demise in 2020 or thereafter.

Suffredini said he expects the consensus ultimately will be to simulate "at least the first leg of a trip to a distant planet."

NASA's future for manned exploration is up in the air as the debate drags on as to where astronauts should head in the decades ahead: the moon, asteroids and/or Mars. The cost promises to be a major factor, along with the development of rocketships big enough to travel so far.

Azerbaijan Arrests 22 of Their Own Citizens for Allegedly Being Iranian Spies

By Madison Ruppert

Azerbaijan - The Azerbaijani government has announced that they arrested 22 of their own citizens who they claim are Iranian spies.

The tensions between Iran and neighboring Azerbaijan have only increased over recent months and this latest announcement is, without a doubt, not going to make anything less heated.

Late last month, Iran complained of “creeping Zionist influence” in the Caucasus, a jab which was clearly aimed at Azerbaijan. This came after Azerbaijan signed a shockingly large $1.6 billion weapons deal with Israel.

The Associated Press reports that security services in Azerbaijan arrested the individuals who they claim were hired by Iran to carry out multiple terrorist attacks against both the American and Israeli embassies and other entities linked to the West.

Back in 2007, Azerbaijan convicted 15 individuals who were accused of being part of an alleged spy network linked to Iran which was supposedly transmitting intelligence on the Western and Israeli activities in the country.

Just last month, Azerbaijan announced that they arrested another alleged terrorist group who was supposedly working under Iranian security forces.

In January, an additional two people were arrested and accused of planning to murder two teachers at a Jewish school in the capital city of Azerbaijan, Baku.

The latest individuals who were arrested are accused of being trained in Iran directly by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The statement did not reveal when these 22 individuals were arrested, or how they were captured or discovered. As of now they have been charged with treason in addition to the purchase and possession of weapons and explosives.

Interestingly, this alleged plot brings both Russia and Syria into the mix.

Azerbaijan’s security ministry claimed in their official statement that an alleged operative of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps identified as Akper Pakravesh recruited individuals who he met with in the Russian capital of Moscow and the Syrian capital of Damascus, at which time they were given finances and equipment.

Azerbaijani officials claimed that they found espionage equipment grenades, automatic assault rifles, ammunition and other explosives when capturing the alleged terrorists.

Alleged targets included the offices of an unnamed Jewish organization, Western and Israeli diplomatic missions, the local headquarters of behemoth oil corporation BP as well as, oddly enough, an American-themed fast food restaurant.

Like the alleged plots in both Georgia and India, these targets do not make much sense when one attempts to assume the mindset of a terrorist.

The only targets that might actually make an impact would be diplomatic missions but even then, chances are that the only result would be a hellacious assault on Iranians.

It seems highly unlikely that the IRGC, a group which the Western establishment media loves to characterize as some superhuman crack squad of terrorist handlers, would choose targets like a fast food restaurant.

Obviously such an attack would only give more reasons for warmongers to cite when attempting to justify a war with Iran, while accomplishing absolutely nothing.

I’m not one to think that violence can accomplish anything truly meaningful, but blowing up cheeseburgers and milkshakes seems especially pointless, especially given the inevitable repercussions which would follow.
The Associated Press points to Iran’s constant denials of any links to the attacks which are blamed on them, however they write that Iran “accuses Israel of directing the slayings of Iranian scientists.”


It isn’t just Iran accusing Israel of directing the assassinations of Iranian scientists linked to their nuclear program, indeed anonymous American officials have confirmed that the Israeli Mossad is indeed training and running the assassinations.

The statement alleges that some of the individuals who were supposedly involved in the plot were recruited as early as 1999, while one of the brothers of the accused called the allegations, “unfounded and fabricated.”

It will be interesting to see if the likes of the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu and his warmonger cronies will jump on this as another questionable justification for a strike on Iran.