![]() ![]() While human space travel was becoming safer and thus more popular, it did not put a complete halt to primate experiments in space.Ī large squirrel monkey, aptly named Goliath, was killed in an Air Force Atlas E rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in late 1961. It took him one hour and 28.5 minutes to orbit the Earth and while he landed safely, an equipment malfunction meant that he suffered repeated electric shocks during the flight.ĭespite his traumatic on-board experience, Enos' mission paved the way for John Glenn's famous orbital flight on February 20, 1962. The first American to orbit the Earth was a chimp named Enos who flew into space aboard Mercury Atlas 5 on November 29, 1961. Shepard's Mercury mission was designed to enter space, but not achieve orbit. Shortly after, on May 5, 1961, American astronaut Alan Shepard became the second person and the first American human to travel into space. The Soviet Union's Yuri Gagarin became the first human to ever reach space when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961. While he was a bit dehydrated, Ham came out of the 16.5-minute flight unscathed, signalling another success for researchers. While Russia was busy sending dogs into the sky and France was experimenting with intergalactic cats, America's tests with monkeys paved the way for larger primates, and eventually humans to be sent on space odysseys by the U.S.Ĭhimpanzees - being more closely related to humans - seemed like a natural choice for NASA to experiment with next.Ī chimp named Ham embarked on a suborbital spaceflight in January 1961, achieving an altitude of 253km. ![]() No monkeys named Sam were harmed in either mission. This mission proved even less fruitful, only reaching an altitude of 15km before also landing in the Atlantic Ocean nearby the launch site. Soon after, in January, 1960, Sam's mate Miss Sam was also launched in a Mercury capsule. Sam was safely recovered after his short journey. After reaching an altitude of only 82km, the spacecraft was aborted but landed safely in the Atlantic Ocean. Air Force School of Aviation Medicine) took off on a Little Joe rocket aboard the Mercury capsule in December, 1959. People still lay bananas at her grave in Huntsville, Alabama.Ī rhesus monkey named Sam (an acronym for the U.S. She married twice and eventually died of kidney failure in 1984 at the ripe old age of 27. Miss Baker, however, went on to live a long and happy life, becoming a national treasure. Not only did a squirrel monkey named Miss Baker and rhesus monkey named Miss Able reach the astounding new height of 483km aboard a Jupiter rocket, but they also came back alive.īut the good news was short-lived (pardon the pun) as Miss Able lasted only several days before a medical operation to remove an electrode proved fatal and she joined her intergalactic comrades in monkey heaven. However the bad omens associated with his original name came back to haunt the animal, who suffered fatal heat exhaustion under the hot New Mexico sun while waiting to be released from his cramped metal capsule.ġ959 marked a milestone in monkey space travel. ![]() With a fresh new moniker, Yorick the space cadet (previously known as Albert VI), survived his 72km flight in 1951. But even though Albert II survived the launch, he died upon impact when his parachute failed to open on the way back down.Īlberts III and IV perished during their flights in late 1949, and Albert V suffered another parachute malfunction in 1951. Sadly, Albert only made it as high as 63km above ground before he died of suffocation.Įxactly a year later a second monkey named Albert made it to an altitude of 134km, making him the first primate to actually reach space heights. The first of many to be sent up in a V2 rocket by NASA was a rhesus monkey named Albert in June 1948. Let's just say that the results were not favourable for the poor little guys. researchers sent primates into the sky as test subjects. With little knowledge of how the human body would respond to escalated altitudes, U.S. Before mankind took the giant leap, we sent our monkey cousins into space to suss out the great unknown for us. ![]()
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