MARS NEEDS MONKEYS!

50 years to the day the Soviets roasted Sputnik II on re-entry (along with Russian space pooch "Laika", the poker playing mongrel with the worst win/loss percentage this side of the Urals) Russia has pledged a one way trip to the red planet for some lucky monkey.

The announcement was delayed until the passing of Charlton Heston for obvious reasons.

Grueling tests are currently underway at the Sochi Institute of Medical Primatology, where a batch of macaques with the right monkey stuff have begun studying radiation exposure, prolonged weightlessness, isolation and zero gravity poop flinging.

At a press conference following the announcement, three swaggering cosmonkeys attempted to answer questions from the international press. Riding into a conference room on Russian space tricycles, the interplanetary primates immediately set upon CNN's Wolf Blitzer and began viciously preening his beard. This was followed by a shrieking match with CBS's Katie Couric. The conference was abandoned soon after further ruckus involving Anderson Cooper's papaya-scented face balm.

The Russian Mars Monkey program is to be partially underwritten by cosmo-cosmetics giant Revlon in return for confidential eye liner and lip gloss testing.