Before NASA could send human astronauts into orbit, a chimpanzee called Ham was one of the first to put the risky voyage to the test.
The three-year-old chimp created history when he became the first chimpanzee to travel to space, ultimately paving the way for US’s first successful launch of a human astronaut just months later.
Ham, whose name was an acronym of Holloman Aero Med, was born in July 1957 and brought from the French Cameroons in West Africa to Holloman US Air Force Base in New Mexico when he was just two years old in 1959.
The intelligent chimp was trained to perform simple tasks, with the Air Force noting how he was a smart and fast learner.
Then, on January 31, 1961, Ham was launched from Cape Canaveral inside NASA’s Mercury-Redstone rocket, where his journey didn’t quite go to plan.
Ham strapped into the biopack couch for the test flight in 1961 (NASA)
Ham was meant to reach an altitude of 115 miles and speeds of 440mph, however, technical problems saw the spacecraft soar to an altitude of 157 miles above Earth and reach a whopping speed of 5857 mph.
Somehow, NASA managed to gain back control of the rocket and he landed 442 miles downrange, rather than the planned 290 miles, and the rocket had a hard splash landing in the Atlantic Ocean some 60 miles away from the recovery ship.
While in space, Ham experienced 6.6 minutes of weightlessness during the flight that lasted 16.5 minutes, during which he managed to perform lever-pulling tasks and respond to flashing lights.
A medical assessment showed he was slightly fatigued and dehydrated after his travels, but in otherwise good shape.
And while Ham’s successful journey meant America’s first human astronaut, Alan B Shepard Jr, could make the trip on May 5, 1961, the chimp’s life after space was a little depressing, to say the least.
Ham’s journey didn’t go exactly according to plan (Getty Images)
Ham was placed on display within the Washington Zoo just two years later in 1963, where he lived a lonely existence.
From the Washington Zoo, he was then moved to North Carolina Zoological Park in Asheboro in September 1980, where he remained up until his death on January 17, 1983.
The 25-year-old chimp spent the majority of his life as a spectacle and virtually all alone for 17 years.
According to NASA, Ham’s skeleton went to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology while his other remains were laid to rest outside the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
However, Ham wasn’t the first animal to be put to the test either, with dogs, cats and even jellyfish being made to make the perilous voyage.
The first animals in space
Ham lived 17 years alone in captivity (STF/NASA/AFP via Getty Images)
The first animal to go to space was Albert I, a rhesus macaque, on June 11, 1948, aboard a V-2 blossom.
From White Sands, New Mexico, Albert I travelled more than 39 miles but died of suffocation during the flight.
A year later in 1949, three more monkeys, Albert II, Albert III, and Albert IV, went to space. None made it back alive.
Albert II died on impact, while Albert III died in an explosion.
While Albert IV had a successful flight compared to his predecessors, he also died on impact. Then on August 31, 1950, another V-2 launch saw an unanaesthetized mouse make the trip, but did not survive.
The first monkey to survive a space flight
It wasn’t until September 1951 that NASA celebrated the victory of having a monkey return home alive.
Yorick, also known as Albert VI, reached a height of 44.7 miles aboard an Aerobee rocket while in the company of 11 mice.
He survived the flight, but died two hours later as well as two of his mice crewmates. Their deaths were believed to be related to stress from overhearing in the capsule after landing.
On May 22, 1952, two Philippine monkeys, Patricia and Mike, also survived a 36-mile-high flight at a speed of 2000 mph.
They became the first to reach such a high altitude and went on to live out the rest of their days at the National Zoological Park in Washington DC.
Patricia died of natural causes two years later, while Mike passed in 1967.
Dogs and cats in space
Dogs have also been sent to space, including Laika (Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The Soviets initially used mice, rats and rabbits as one-way passengers to space before turning to man’s best friend for the job.
Between 1951 and 1952, the Soviet R-1 series saw nine dogs make the trip, with three dogs flying twice.
Dezik and Tsygan became the first canine suborbital astronauts in 1951 and successfully survived, though many other space-hounds were not so lucky.
Some dogs were picked up from the streets or left in space, such as Laika, a stray in Moscow, who was hastily strapped into a metal carrier to fly in Sputnik 2 which blasted into orbit in November 1957.
Laika died from overheating five hours into the flight while Sputnik 2 was left to burn up in the atmosphere in April 1958.
Meanwhile, French scientists successfully launched the first cat, Félicette, into space on October 1963.
Turtles and jellyfish in space
An effigy of Laika (MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP via Getty Images)
The USSR launched Zond 5 in 1968 with a collection of animals, from turtles to wine flies and mealworms to plants and other living matter, which flew around the Moon.
After the first human Moon landing of Apollo 11, animals in space were limited to ‘biological payload,’ meaning rabbits, turtles, insects, spiders, fish and jellyfish were primarily used instead.
Impacts of animals in space
Many of the animals were sacrificed to make way for human missions and used as test subjects to study the effects of weightlessness and radiation.
NASA says the animals have taught scientists ‘a tremendous amount more than could have been learned without them.’
“Without animal testing in the early days of the human space program, the Soviet and American programs could have suffered great losses of human life,” NASA’s site states.
“These animals performed a service to their respective countries that no human could or would have performed. They gave their lives and/or their service in the name of technological advancement, paving the way for humanity’s many forays into space.”
