The Saddest and Strangest Tales of Animals in Space

Ham the chimpanzee is legendary for being the primary nice ape in house, incomes this distinction on January 31, 1961. A key objective of this NASA Mercury-Redstone mission was to find out if animals might carry out duties in house. To that finish, Ham, who was solely 2 years outdated when the coaching started, was taught to maneuver levers, each to obtain awards within the type of banana pellets and to keep away from punishment within the type of electrical shocks to his ft. Ham, along with coping with the terrifying calls for of spaceflight, additionally needed to actively keep away from getting electrical shocks throughout his journey. The younger chimp carried out exceptionally effectively—and beneath unbelievable adversity, as NASA explains:

Ham carried out these duties effectively, pushing the continual avoidance lever about 50 instances and receiving solely two shocks for dangerous timing. On the discrete avoidance lever, his rating was good. Reaction time on the blue-light lever averaged .82 second, in contrast with a preflight efficiency of .8 second. Ham had gone from a heavy acceleration g load on exit by means of six minutes of weightlessness and to a different heavy g load on reentry hardly lacking a trick. Onboard cameras filming Ham’s response to weightlessness additionally recorded a stunning quantity of mud and particles floating round contained in the capsule throughout its zenith.

The profitable mission set the stage for Alan Shepard, who turned the primary U.S. citizen to succeed in house in 1961. Ham lived the remainder of his life in zoos.