Image: NASA.
In 1961 on this date, the Mercury flight MR-2, carrying Ham, a 37-pound chimpanzee on a ballistic flight to space, was launched. The 15-minute suborbital flight proved to be a rough one; it was later observed that some time after the flight, when Ham was showed the capsule, “it was visually apparent that he had no further interest in cooperating with the space flight program.” Read more about the flight here.
