January 31: The first primate in space (1961)

Ham was greeted by
the Commander of
the recovery ship.

Ham, a four-year old chimpanzee, was sent to the space on a Mercury Redstone 2 rocket into suborbital flight on January 31, 1961. Ham was the first primate in space and successfully returned to the earth. During his 16.5-minute flight, Ham experienced about seven minutes of weightlessness and reached an altitude of 108 mile and a speed of 13,000 mph. His flight was to experiment the ability for human, or primate, to perform missions in space. After Ham's successful flight, NASA was ready to launch the first Mercury astronaut, Alan Shepherd, into suborbital flight three months later. On November 29, 1961, another chimpanzee Enos sent to orbit in another Mercury capsule on an Atlas rocket.  After Ham's flight, other countries did similar experiments with animals: rats by France in February 1961; mice (later guinea pigs and frogs) by the Soviet Union in March 1961; and mice and rats by China in 1964.