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| A launch cover for Able and Baker from "Goldcraft", postmarked at Port Canaveral with a hand cancel on May 28, 1959. |
On May 28, 1959, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency launched Jupiter AM-18 from Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 26B carrying two primates in separate life-support capsules in the missile's nose cone: Able, an American-born rhesus monkey, and Baker, a squirrel monkey. They were sent to an altitude of approximately 300 miles and traveled roughly 1,700–2,000 miles downrange before being recovered safely by the U.S. Navy.
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| Photo: The monkey operates a lever to receive food pellets, learning that it needs to pump the lever 25 times to get the food. While retrieving food in space, the monkey simultaneously transmits data to scientists on Earth. |
The flight lasted about 16 minutes, including approximately nine minutes of weightlessness. Biomedical instruments monitored their physiological responses, including heart rate, respiration, body temperature, and other reactions to acceleration, weightlessness, and reentry. The telemetry showed that both animals tolerated the flight remarkably well, providing important evidence that living organisms could survive the stresses of spaceflight.
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| Photo: Image of Able secured in a "space suit." |
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| Photo: Recovery of the nose cone that transported Able and Baker by the USS Kiowa on May 28, 1959. |
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| Photo: The space monkey Able was extracted from its capsule on Thursday after a journey through space in the nose cone of a Jupiter missile launched from Cape Canaveral. The capsule was recovered by the Navy ship Kiowa in the Atlantic, approximately 1,500 miles southeast of the launch site. |
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| Photo: Space monkey Baker being monitored by medical staff following its journey through space. |
Unfortunately, Able died four days after the flight during anesthesia for a routine operation to remove an implanted electrode. Her death was unrelated to the flight itself; Baker went on to live until 1984.
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| Photo: Space monkey Able passed away in 1959 while undergoing surgery to remove a recording device that had been implanted to monitor its physical condition during the spaceflight. |
