On November 3rd, 1957, the Soviet Union had decided to launch the Sputnik 2 and had hurried to take advantage of the propaganda of the first satellite. The Soviet Union had designed a dog-like bed and went to the streets where they found Laika, the stray dog they had used to send to space. Once they got the spacecraft ready for launch they watched as the spacecraft and Laika went up and above orbit but they noticed that the booster rocket was still attached to the spacecraft even after going into orbit. Due to the engineers being rushed to finish the spacecraft, they lacked provisions to go and recover Laika. The Soviet Union had agreed that Laika had only survived five to seven hours due to her spacecraft overheating.

On a sunny January 31st, 1961, the first ever chimpanzee was aboard Mercury Redstone Rocket on a sub-orbital flight that’s very similar to Alan Shepard’s. Ham was born in July 1957, West Africa, to Holloman Air Force Base in 1959 before he was brought to Washington from French Camaroons. The original flight plan was to take Ham to an altitude of 115 miles and speed reaching an altitude of 4400 mph, but instead the spacecraft carried him to an altitude of 157 miles and a speed of 5857 mph and landed 422 miles downrange instead of 157 miles. Ham had done impressively well during the flight and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean 60 miles away from the recovery ship. Ham had experienced 6.6 minutes of weightlessness during his 16.5 minute flight. Ham’s mission had paved its way for the successful launch of America’s first human sent to space on May 5th, 1961. After Ham finished multiple medical examinations he was sent to Washington Zoo where he lived until he sadly passed on January 17th, 1980.