A chimpanzee named Ham was among the first to try the perilous journey before NASA could launch human astronauts into orbit.
The three-year-old chimp made history by being the first chimp to reach space, which helped the United States launch a human astronaut just a few months later.
Born in July 1957, Ham was transferred 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.
His name was an abbreviation for Holloman Aero Med. The Air Force noted that the clever chimp was quick to pick things up and was trained to do basic tasks.
Ham’s journey didn’t exactly go as planned when he was launched from Cape Canaveral on January 31, 1961, inside NASA’s Mercury-Redstone rocket.
Technical issues caused the spacecraft to soar to a height of 157 miles above Earth and reach an incredible speed of 5857 mph, while it Ham was only supposed to reach a height of 115 miles and a speed of 440 mph.
