Mercury-Redstone 2 (MR-2) was the final qualification flight before Alan Shepard’s historic suborbital mission, and it carried a very special passenger: Ham, a 3-year-old chimpanzee named after the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center in New Mexico. Launched on January 31, 1961, from Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 5, Ham became the first great ape to fly in space.

Ham’s job was to perform lever-pulling tasks during the flight, responding to light stimuli to demonstrate that a living creature could perform useful work during the stresses of spaceflight. He performed admirably — his reaction times in space were only a fraction of a second slower than on the ground, proving that cognitive tasks were possible in the space environment.

The flight did not go entirely as planned. The Redstone booster burned longer than expected, pushing Ham to a peak altitude of 157 miles — 42 miles higher than the planned 115-mile apogee. The overshoot also sent the capsule 422 miles downrange, significantly farther than intended. On reentry, Ham endured a punishing 14.7 G deceleration. The capsule splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean and began taking on water through a leaky valve before recovery helicopters from the USS Donner reached it.

Despite the harrowing ride, Ham was recovered safely, appearing agitated but healthy. He went on to live at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and later at the North Carolina Zoo, where he passed away on January 19, 1983, at the age of 25. His successful flight — proving that a primate could survive launch, weightlessness, and reentry while performing tasks — directly paved the way for Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 mission on May 5, 1961.