On January 31, 1961, there was a special event in space history. A chimpanzee named Ham traveled into space, becoming the first of his kind to do so. Before famed astronauts like Alan Shepard and Neil Armstrong, there was Ham, a small chimpanzee, weighing only 37 pounds. Ham is remembered as both a hero and a creature who was put into a difficult situation during the space race.
Ham was part of a group of six chimps chosen for NASA’s Project Mercury. They were taken to Cape Canaveral in Florida, where they trained for three weeks in simulators designed to mimic the conditions of space. The purpose of sending Ham into space was to test if a spacecraft’s systems could keep a living creature safe and comfortable. This included making sure the life support systems worked during the short time of weightlessness in space.
Number 65 was a male chimpanzee, born in Africa in 1957. He was caught by trappers and taken to a bird farm in Florida. Then, in 1959, the U.S. Air Force bought him and took him to Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. There, he learned to be an astro-chimp, which is a chimpanzee trained for space missions. His handlers called him “Ham” because of where he was trained. Ham was one of 40 chimps picked for the space program.
Before sending humans to space, NASA wanted to see if they could do tasks there. They picked chimpanzees because they’re like humans in many ways. They wanted to see if chimps could do tasks in space that other animals couldn’t. In simple words, Ham was like a test subject to see if humans could survive a journey into space. According to NASA’s publication, This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury, (“Ham Paves the Way” chapter):
Intelligent and normally docile, the chimpanzee is a primate of sufficient size and sapience to provide a reasonable facsimile of human behavior. Its average response time to a given physical stimulus is .7 of a second, compared with man’s average .5 second. Having the same organ placement and internal suspension as man, plus a long medical research background, the chimpanzee chosen to ride the Redstone and perform a lever-pulling chore throughout the mission should not only test out the life-support systems but prove that levers could be pulled during launch, weightlessness, and reentry.
The chimpanzees were trained to push buttons when they heard sounds or saw lights. If they did it right within five seconds, they got treats called banana pellets. If not, they felt a little shock on their feet. Scientists also made them experience what it’s like to feel strong forces and float in space, like the people training to go to space, called the “Mercury Seven.” They trained for almost two years.
The astrochimps were not trained to “pilot” space capsules. Instead, they were trained to do regular jobs during short space trips. They were also used as test subjects to understand the dangers of space travel, both physically and mentally. This helped scientists learn about the risks before sending humans, starting from the Mercury program and continuing into later space missions.
“According to one story, which strict scientists contend is apocryphal,” LIFE wrote, “a veterinarian gave a banana to a chimp before a rocket sled ride. As the animal peeled it, the ride started with a lurch and the monkey got the banana full in the face. The next time the chimp was offered a banana before a sled ride, he took it, peeled it, and smeared it over the veterinarian’s face.”
On January 31, 1961, a Mercury-Redstone launched from Cape Canaveral carrying the Ham over 400 miles down range in an arching trajectory that reached a peak of 158 miles above the Earth. Ham performed his lever-pulling tasks well in response to flashing lights. NASA used chimpanzees and other primates to test the Mercury capsule before launching the first American astronauts.
During the flight, his vital signs and various assigned tasks were closely monitored by computers back on Earth. At one point, the spacecraft lost some air because of a problem with a valve. But Ham was safe in his spacesuit. Ham’s journey in the spacecraft lasted for about 16 and a half minutes. He flew at around 5800 miles per hour and reached a height of 157 miles above the Earth. During part of the journey, he felt weightless for about 6 and a half minutes. Even with all the speed and strange feelings, Ham performed his tasks without any problem.
During the flight, they checked how Ham reacted to feeling weightless and speeding up by making him do tasks where he pulled levers. He had practiced doing these tasks before the flight. According to A Brief History of Animals in Space published by the NASA History Office, the flight did not go completely as planned:
The original flight plan called for an altitude of 115 miles and speeds ranging up to 4,400 mph. However, due to technical problems, the spacecraft carrying Ham reached an altitude of 157 miles and a speed of 5,857 mph and landed 422 miles downrange rather than the anticipated 290 miles… He experienced a total of 6.6 minutes of weightlessness during a 16.5-minute flight.
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After the flight, when Ham’s capsule landed in the water, it was about 130 miles away from where it was supposed to be. The capsule started filling with water, but it took a few hours for a ship to come and rescue Ham. Amazingly, he was alive and seemed pretty calm, considering what he’d been through. His trainer described the moment he was recovered from his capsule following the project – “I have never seen such terror on a chimp’s face.” Biologist, Jane Goodall, would say his face showed “the most extreme fear.”
Later on, there was another moment that showed how scared Ham was. Some photographers wanted to take more pictures of him in his seat, but he refused to get back in. Even though people tried to make him, he wouldn’t do it.
After he flew into space, Ham lived alone for 20 years in the National Zoological Park in Washington D.C. Then, he moved to the North Carolina Zoo where he could be with other chimpanzees.
He died when he was only 26 years old on January 19, 1983. Some people wanted to make an exhibit of his stuffed body in a museum, but many disagreed. They thought it was disrespectful. An article in the Washington Post wrote, “Talk about death without dignity.” A letter in the Smithsonian Archives from a sophomore at West High School in Painted Post, New York, summed up the public mood: “By treating his body like that of a stupid beast, people will continue thinking of apes as stupid beasts, and not the intelligent, almost human animals they really are.”
Instead of being stuffed, Ham was cremated, and his ashes were buried with a plaque at the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico. His bones are now shown at the National Museum of Health and Medicine.
