Did you know a host of creatures paved the way for human spaceflight? Fruit flies were the first to be sent up in 1947 and they were recovered alive. A couple of years later, Albert II, a rhesus monkey, made it to a height of 134 km, but a problem with the parachute led to his end on landing. Following Albert II, a number of monkeys were sent up but none survived. Their sacrifices helped scientists study the effects of weightlessness and radiation on living beings. The first monkeys to survive the flight into space to a height of over 550km were Able and Baker in 1959.
They flew to a height of 360 miles (580 km) on May 28, 1959 aboard a Jupiter rocket. Their capsule landed 1700 miles (2736 km) downrange from the Eastern Space Missile Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and they were successfully recovered. To read more about this historic event, check out our story commemorating the 50th anniversary of the flight.
Picture Credit : Google
