Washington - Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong are names
printed in bold in the history books. But two smaller, unknown space
pioneers who helped make their advances possible had their first
flight 50 years ago.
Two monkeys were shot into space by the US space agency NASA on
May 28, 1959 - paving the way for humans, like the Russian who became
the first man to orbit the Earth and the US astronaut who was the
first to set foot on the moon.
Rhesus monkey Able and squirrel monkey Miss Baker were the first
monkeys to orbit the Earth and return home alive, giving US
scientists valuable clues about the effects of weightlessness.
On their big day, the animals, each about the size of a cat, were
strapped into a Jupiter AM-18 rocket and shot 500 kilometres into
space from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The monkeys successfully
completed their flight two years before Gagarin circled the globe.
The space race between the United States and the Soviet Union saw
the Russians rely most on dogs for their non-human space tests. The
dog Laika aboard Sputnik 2 was the first animal to orbit the Earth in
1957 but perished during the flight.
Able and Miss Baker's rocket flew 2,500 kilometres and landed
about 15 minutes after takeoff on the Caribbean island of Antigua.
They were the first animals to return alive from space.
Jim David, a curator at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in
Washington, called the moment an important step in the US space
programme. At that time, information about the effects of
weightlessness was in short supply, he said.
The animal astronauts were able to appear at the subsequent press
conference, but Able would soon pay a steep price for her trip to
space. An electrode that had been implanted under her skin became
infected and had to be operated on. She died on the operating table.
The monkey was stuffed and now reminds visitors of the achievement
at the Air and Space Museum, strapped into the capsule in which she
travelled to space. In 1985, the US animal space flight programme was
discontinued. Though NASA no longer sends monkeys aloft, it still
conducts some experiments with small animals.
Today, animal-rights activists find the scientific efforts of the
early space age unacceptable.
The way monkeys were strapped into a capsule was 'unbelievably
brutal,' said Kathy Guillermo, vice president of animal rights
organization PETA.
In contrast to Able, Miss Baker was able to enjoy her fame, even
visiting the White Hose and receiving buckets of fan mail. She died
in 1984 at the age of 27 and was buried at the NASA Marshall Space
Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama.
USA
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