Before an American astronaut left Earth, a chimpanzee had already flown into space. On January 31, 1961, a three-year-old chimpanzee named Ham rode a Mercury-Redstone rocket 157 miles above the Earth and was safely returned after a flight of about sixteen and a half minutes, a mission that took place 65 years ago this year. According to NASA's official history of animals in space, the mission was designed to test whether a chimpanzee could still perform simple, trained tasks correctly during the stress of launch, weightlessness, and re-entry, before any human took that same risk.
Meet the chimp who trained like an astronaut
