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| A GORDO launch cover from "Goldcraft", postmarked at Port Canaveral with a hand cancel on December 13, 1958. |
Gordo, a South American squirrel monkey, was carried aboard Army Jupiter missile AM-13, launched from Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 26B as part of a biomedical experiment to determine whether a living creature could withstand the stresses of spaceflight. The Jupiter reached an altitude of approximately 300 miles, and Gordo experienced about 8.3 minutes of weightlessness, approximately 10 g during launch, and up to 40 g during reentry. Telemetry indicated that he survived the flight and reentry in good condition, providing valuable data for the emerging U.S. human spaceflight program. However, the nose cone’s flotation system failed after splashdown in the Atlantic, and Gordo could not be recovered. The mission was an important precursor to Project Mercury and helped demonstrate that the physical stresses of spaceflight could be survived by a living organism.
