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Primates Timeline

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The Americans were the first to ever launch primates. Most primates were anesthetized before lift-off. Numerous backup monkeys also went through the programs but never flew. Monkeys and apes from several species were used, including rhesus monkeys, cynomolgus monkeys, squirrel monkeys, pig-tailed macaques, and chimpanzees. From 1948-49 they successfully launched a series of suborbital V-2 flights occupied by monkeys but the recovery systems didn’t work so well, and the monkeys died in the crash. Among these monkeys was a rhesus monkey named Albert, he was sent to an altitude of 39 miles in June 1948. He sadly died of suffocation during his ride along with his brothers who had also died for the cause. Another rhesus monkey, Albert II, was the …show more content…

Albert III & Albert IV sadly died during their flights in late 1949. Albert V was also the victim of a parachute malfunction in 1951. Albert VI (Yorick) was the first American monkey to survive a suborbital flight, even though it only topped out at an altitude of just 45 miles when “space” is at an altitude of 62 miles. He sadly died hours after landing, most likely from heat stress inside his tiny cramped capsule, in the desert of New Mexico, waiting for the recovery team. Finally, a rhesus monkey named Able and a squirrel monkey named Baker reached an altitude of 300 miles on a Jupiter rocket and were retrieved unharmed. Able was the first animal ever to survive the trip to space and back. Sadly, several days later, Able died during an operation on her skin. As the American space-flight program began to build speed, the U.S. started experimenting with chimpanzees, which are bigger and more closer to humans than a squirrel, rhesus, or any other monkeys. America launched a chimpanzee named Ham on a suborbital flight on Jan 31, 1961, just before Alan Shepard’s historic flight. Ham reached an altitude of 157 miles during a 16.5-minute

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