About three weeks before Neil Armstrong took his historic step on the Moon, there was another living being that was traveling a lonely way from the Earth, and very few people seem to know about him. This animal was Bonnie, a 6-kilogram pig-tailed macaque monkey placed inside the satellite Biosatellite III on June 28, 1969, and launched from Cape Canaveral. His task was to travel around the Earth for thirty days, while being monitored by sensors measuring the brain wave pattern, heart rate, and chemical composition of his body. According to NASA's own history archives, the mission never even came close to its completion, as it was aborted after less than nine days in space due to Bonnie’s failing health conditions, and he eventually died of a heart attack caused by dehydration.
A body wired for science, alone in the dark
There was much more to the experiment than mere floating through space. NASA scientists had fitted Bonnie with devices to record his cardiovascular functions, brain activity, and behavioral responses, in addition to monitoring how his body coped with water and salt balance in zero gravity, all while Bonnie was confined in an enclosed capsule without any companionship of other living beings around him. The experiment carried out in 1969 was highly invasive by NASA standards.
