Iran is working on its own personal space race. According to a Sunday report from the Associated Press, the country’s space program is currently laying the groundwork for launching a monkey into space – and into orbit – next month.

The mission would, supposedly, not be Iran’s first experience with using animals for space exploration. The country’s space agency claimed in January that it had propelled another monkey past Earth’s atmosphere, into outer space, and back to solid ground in a safe and successful fashion. Hamid Fazeli, the deputy head of Iran’s space agency, claims that the monkey tests will help the country in its quest to get a man in space by 2018.

Monkeys are not the only animals with space travel candidacy, however. In September, Iran’s space agency inspired quite a bit of controversy when it announced plans to send a Persian cat on a space expedition next March. Animal rights organizations, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, have viewed Iran’s space experiments as unethical, inappropriate, and “archaic.” The organization noted that, while the United States and the Soviet Union began their space travel experiments by sending dogs and monkeys into place, animals have hardly been used for outer space missions since.

“European and U.S. space agencies stopped sending animals into space, not only because it is unethical, but also because they turned out to be poor models for the human experience and because superior, more scientific non-animal methods of study are now available,” said Ben Williamson, the spokesperson for the organization.

Whether Iran has shelved the Persian cat experiment remains to be seen. However, if the country’s space agency proceeds in sending this new monkey into space, uproar from animal rights activists will undoubtedly erupt again. Some claimed that the country’s “space travel monkey” did not actually return from its January mission and that Iran substituted a different monkey for post-mission media appearances. It wouldn’t be the first time a monkey space experiment failed. Iran first tried to send a monkey into space – unsuccessfully – in 2011.

However, while the ethical questions surrounding animals are certainly valid arguments against Iran’s questionable space experimentation techniques, they aren’t the only instance of controversy surrounding the country’s recent interest in space travel. Some governments throughout the western world have theorized that Iran’s space agency is no more than a front for the development and testing of potential nuclear weaponry, though Iran has claimed that such theories are fiction.