Ham, the Astrochimp
Dear Friends Sharing a Photo of the Day You are seeing Ham the Chimp, the first humanoid ever to be launched into space. He is the astrochimp. .On January 31, 1961, Ham flew on the Mercury-Redstone 2 mission, part of the U.S. space program's Project Mercury. Ham was born in 1957 in French Cameroon. He was purchased by the United Air Force and brought to Holloman Air Force Base in 1959. Beginning in July 1959, the two-year-old chimpanzee was trained under the direction of neuroscientist Joseph V. Brady at Holloman Air Force Base Aero Medical Field Laboratory to do simple, timed tasks in response to electric lights and sounds. On January 31, 1961, Ham was secured in a Project Mercury mission designated MR-2 and launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a suborbital flight. Ham's capsule splashed down in the Atlant...