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
