A previous orbital effort in 2011 failed.įollow senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter or. Iran's recent launch was not its first attempt to send a monkey into space. France also blasted two pig-tailed macaque monkeys to suborbital space in 1967. (Laika died during the flight.)ĭespite its canine focus, the Soviet Union and its successor state Russia did launch a number of rhesus monkeys to space in the 1980s and 1990s, as part of a program called Bion. The nation famously succeeded in lofting the first animal - a dog called Laika ("Barker") - to orbit aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft in November 1957. The Soviets launched their first dogs to space in 1951. The United States' space race rival, the Soviet Union, primarily used dogs in the run-up to its first human launches, thinking that canines would prove to be less fidgety in flight than monkeys. continued to launch animals for scientific experiments but increasingly concentrated on smaller creatures such as mice and insects, which are easier to care for and take up much less space (although two squirrel monkeys did ride on the space shuttle Challenger's STS-51-B mission in April-May 1985.) was slightly late to the party: Gagarin orbited our planet on his flight of April 12, 1961.)Īfter it became established that humans could indeed survive the rigors of spaceflight, monkeys and apes faded into the background. 29, 1961, paving the way for John Glenn's historic orbital flight of Feb. With this success in hand, Alan Shepard successfully blasted off on his suborbital flight on May 5, 1961, becoming the first American - and second human, after the Soviet Union's Yuri Gagarin - ever to reach space.Ī chimp named Enos orbited the Earth on Nov. Ham reached an altitude of 157 miles (253 km) during a 16.5-minute flight and was recovered unharmed, though a bit dehydrated. launched a chimp named Ham on a suborbital spaceflight on Jan. (Sadly, Able died several days later during an operation to remove an electrode from under her skin.)Īs the American human spaceflight program began to build momentum, the nation started experimenting with chimpanzees, which are larger and more closely related to humans than are rhesus, squirrel or other monkeys. A rhesus monkey named Able and a squirrel monkey named Baker reached an altitude of 300 miles (483 km) aboard a Jupiter rocket and were retrieved unharmed. The United States recorded a milestone in May 1959, finally recovering two primates alive after a spaceflight. Yorick died several hours after landing, possibly from heat stress suffered as he sat inside his cramped capsule in the New Mexico sun, waiting for the recovery crew. Albert VI, also known as Yorick, survived his 1951 flight, though it topped out at an altitude of just 45 miles (72 km) - significantly below the generally accepted 62-mile (100 km) boundary demarcating outer space. He survived the launch but died after a parachute failure caused his capsule to slam hard into the ground.Īlberts III and IV died during their missions in late 1949, and Albert V was victimized by another parachute failure in 1951. His reaction times were only slightly slower in space than they had been on Earth.Another rhesus monkey named Albert II, for example, became the first primate to reach space, achieving an altitude of 83 miles (134 km) aboard another V2 in June 1949. And Ham performed quite well, even in zero-gravity. If he made it in time, he received a banana-flavored pellet, which, though clichéd, is an inevitable dietary preference of chimps. If Ham did not pull the lever within five seconds of the light flashing, he received an electric shock on the soles of his feet. Ham, whose vitals were closely monitored by NASA techs on the ground, went 157 miles into the sky with a simple mission: to tug on levers when corresponding lights flashed. There was work to be done - specifically, to see if chimps, and by close genetic association, humans, had slower reaction times in space. It explores the early steps taken by the U.S. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human to follow Ham's lead, did so just two and a half months later.īut this was no leisure tour for Ham. In January 1961, a 3-year old chimpanzee named Ham rocketed into outer space. 1961: A little fellow named Ham (for Holloman Aerospace Medical Center, his place of training) hitches a ride on the Mercury-Redstone 2 rocket to become the first chimp in outer space.
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