primates in space 🐒🧑🚀
since so many people are invested in the artemis ii mission, i thought this would be a great chance to highlight some of the apes & monkeys who helped pioneer spaceflight.
excluding humans, more than 30 primates have left earth's atmosphere and, though not all of them returned safely, they helped us understand the effects of weightlessness.
named for the first two letters of the (old) nato phonetic alphabet, miss able, a rhesus monkey, and miss baker, a squirrel monkey, were the first primates to survive spaceflight in 1959
[able enjoying a snack; baker and able being recovered; baker with a model of the craft she went up on; able cheesing following her flight]
chosen for their intelligence and docility, the two tiny "monkeynauts" were strapped into jupiter am-18's nose cone in a cradle that essentially immobilized their bodies. while not very comfortable, it gave scientists an idea of how to send humans to space.
lift-off was scheduled for 2:39 in the morning of may 28, 1959. able and baker traveled approximately 480 km (300 miles) into the thermosphere. in total, the flight lasted 16 minutes, with 9 of those minutes being weightless.
able and baker were successfully retrieved off the coast of puerto rico and immediately became celebrities. they were featured on the cover of life magazine, held press conferences, and were awarded certificates of merit from the aspca.
[able & baker at a press conference in washington dc]
unfortunately, able died a few days after her flight. she had an unexpected reaction to the anesthesia during a routine operation. her body was preserved and put on display in the national air and space museum, part of the smithsonian. a version of her, played by crystal the monkey, was one of the exhibits to come to life in night at the museum: battle of the smithsonian.
baker, on the other hand, lived to the ripe old age of 27! after her spaceflight, she took up residence at the naval aerospace medical center. later, she moved to the u.s. space and rocket center where she was treated like the celebrity she was. baker received hundreds of letters from children, was "married" twice (her first mate predeceased her), and celebrated her birthday with a banquet of cottage cheese and strawberry jello.
at the time of her death in 1984, baker was the oldest living squirrel monkey. her grave at the space & rocket center is regularly decorated with bananas 🍌🚀
[miss baker celebrating her birthday in 1979; miss baker's gravestone decorated with bananas
