Ham flew aboard Mercury-Redstone 2 on January 31, 1961, surviving a 16-minute suborbital flight that tested whether a primate could perform tasks during spaceflight.

Cape Canaveral, Florida to Atlantic recovery area

Story

Ham was trained to pull levers in response to signals and then flew aboard Mercury-Redstone 2 in 1961.

The mission helped test task performance during spaceflight, while also raising the ethical weight of animal experimentation.

Ham is archived because the story preserves both a spaceflight milestone and the life of the animal who carried that risk.

Sources

• NASA: Ham the Astrochimp
• Wikipedia: Mercury-Redstone 2
• Wikimedia Commons: Ham