On May 28, 1959, an Army Ballistic Missile Agency Jupiter missile lifted two animals 300 miles above Earth. It returned them alive, marking the first successful animal recovery for the American space program, after a squirrel monkey named Gordo had died on splashdown five months earlier when his capsule's flotation gear failed, according to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. Records show that Able, a rhesus monkey, and Baker, a squirrel monkey, rode the nose cone of that rocket as part of a Department of Defense biomedical experiment involving the Army Medical Research and Development Command and the U.S. Navy School of Aviation Medicine, which trained Baker, and were recovered in good condition after splashdown. That bit of the story often appears in space trivia. The part that follows is often left out. It shows how two successful test subjects can end up very differently once the cameras stop recording.
Why NASA needed two monkeys to prove a point
Before any American entered a capsule, scientists did not know whether a living body could survive launch, weightlessness, and reentry. Rockets before Able and Baker had already killed many animals when they hit the ground or were recovered. So the mission had one task: show that a monkey could make the trip and walk away. The mission worked. Both monkeys handled the acceleration, weightlessness, and return to Earth without any signs of injury. Smithsonian records confirm both animals were in good condition after the flight, a major success for the program that hoped to send people someday.
