Chimpanzee Ham during space flight training – NASA
Madrid, as 31. (Europe Press) –
63 years ago, on January 31, 1961, chimpanzee Ham became the first animal to travel into space. It gave America the confidence to take astronauts off Earth.
Ham is from the Holloman Aerospace Medicine Center, where he learned to perform some of the basic operations necessary to operate a spacecraft. Thanks to his training, Hamm was able to reach an altitude of 253 kilometers and was weightless for seven minutes.
The mission was undertaken within Project Mercury to simulate what the first human astronaut would experience. Liftoff on a Redstone 2 rocket was accomplished without incident, but a problem with the rocket's throttle regulator resulted in intractable overspeed. until the liquid oxygen runs out.
Although the flight lasted 16 minutes and 39 seconds, and the capsule landed in the Atlantic Ocean 679 kilometers from its launch site, according to NASA, the chimpanzee is the first “halo of hope” for future human travel. Space. Hamm was rescued safely, and a quick check-up confirmed he was in good condition.
Before Hamm, the US space agency had already attempted to send monkeys into space six times, but none of them had survived the journey.
Two months later, on April 12, the Soviet Union made a splash with the first manned orbital flight, starring Yuri Gagarin.. The U.S. could not send an astronaut outside Earth until May 9 with Alan Shepard, only a companion flight. Already in May 1962 John Glenn would equal Gagar's record for orbital flight.
