50th Anniversary of Space-Monkey Success
Fifty years ago, two girls, Able and Baker, went to space. After their brief spaceflight on May 28, 1959, the two pioneers were hailed as heroes and made the cover of LIFE, which lauded them as America’s Space Travelers. Able, a seven-pound rhesus monkey, and Baker, a one-pound squirrel monkey, paved the way for the modern astronaut—they were the first primates to survive the trip to space as well as the landing. Today, says Jim David, a curator at the Smithsonian’s Air & Space Museum, their flight is just "one of many long-forgotten space events." This one had special significance because, at the time, so little was known about the effects that space would have on living things. "This was a very important step in determining the biomedical effects of spaceflight," David says. "Step by step, we learned that, absent massive radiation doses, accident, or malfunction, spaceflight doesn’t kill." Full article
