A three-year-old chimpanzee named Ham sits in the biopack couch for the MR-2 suborbital test flight.
On January 31, 1961, a Mercury-Redstone launch from Cape Canaveral carried the chimpanzee “Ham” over 640 kilometers down range in an arching trajectory that reached a peak of 254 kilometers above the Earth. The mission was successful and Ham performed his lever-pulling task well in response to the flashing light.
