Ham (chimpanzee)

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Ham in a seat made for him before the flight

Ham (born July 1956 ; died January 19, 1983 ) was the first chimpanzee to fly into space on January 31, 1961 during the Mercury program . During the suborbital Mercury-Redstone 2 mission , it reached a summit height of 253 km.

prehistory

In order to research the effects of radiation in space in particular, rye, cotton seeds and fruit flies were transported to the outer space at an altitude of 109 kilometers by means of an Aggregate 4 rocket on February 20, 1947 . In June 1949 a mammal followed, also with an A4, for the first time, the rhesus monkey Albert II . He survived the flight to an altitude of about 130 km, but not the landing because the parachute did not open. On November 3, 1957, the Soviet Union shot Laika the female dog into space with Sputnik 2 , but she did not survive. In October 1958, the United States announced that it was launching a manned space program called the Mercury. Before humans could be transported into space, further tests had to be carried out to determine how the survival of a spaceship could be ensured and how living things could endure weightlessness . On December 13, 1958, a suborbital rocket flight succeeded with a squirrel monkey named Gordo , who was also exposed to weightlessness for eight minutes, but drowned when the landing capsule dumped in the ocean due to an error in the parachute functions.

Further tests with animals were carried out, whereby in addition to monkeys a pig, Gentle Bess , was used, with which the landing was trained. On May 28, 1959, a suborbital flight succeeded with two monkeys, Miss Able and Miss Baker , a rhesus and a squirrel monkey, which reached an altitude of about 500 km with a Jupiter rocket and could be recovered at a distance of 2,700 km . More rhesus monkeys were then used: Sam launched into space on December 4, 1959. His flight served to test the rescue system and medical examinations; he survived the flight without any problems. The test with Miss Sam on January 21, 1960 was also successful.

origin

Ham came from the Central African rainforest and was released in the jungle of Cameroon born. His clan including his mother fell victim to poachers. Ham was sold at an animal or meat market and was said to still cling to his dead mother there. No. 65 , Ham was called before it was given a name, was one of 40 chimpanzees flown into Holloman Air Force Base . His keepers called him Chop Chop Chang. It was only after its successful return to earth that it was renamed "Ham", a name derived from the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico . This was allegedly because NASA staff feared the bad press that could result from the death of a "named" chimpanzee if the mission were unsuccessful.

Preparation and flight

A soldier was assigned to each chimpanzee as their personal trainer, with Airman Jeffrey Schaefer , a farmer's son, assigned to Ham . Since Ham was full of parasites and fleas when he arrived, he was placed in quarantine for the time being to prevent mutual contamination. Ham was not used to people because he was not raised on a reservation or an African farm like many of the other chimpanzees. He was weakened and did not take any food at first, and 40 days later he was the only chimpanzee that was still kept in quarantine. Another chimpanzee ( No. 87 ) was therefore initially the most promising chimpanzee on the Air Force base for space flight, gradually Ham caught up to No. 87 and both were later among the three main candidates. Ham was four years old when he was later trained with five other chimpanzees to respond to certain light and sound stimuli with simple tasks, using bananas as a reward and light electric shocks as punishment. The chimpanzees also had to endure extreme heat, extreme acceleration, claustrophobia, immobility and total loneliness.

The genus chimpanzee was chosen because the biology of these apes to that of the people most similar to his reaction time differs little from that of a human. A first unmanned start with a Mercury-Redstone System (MR-1), as it was to be used for the manned missions, failed in July 1960 and the rocket had to be blown up after 59 seconds, another start (MR- 1A) on December 19 was more successful. The MR-2 mission with Ham had to prove whether a living being could fly and survive in the new spaceship. Ham's trainer Jeffrey Schaefer was not allowed to accompany his chimpanzee to Cape Canaveral. Ham , along with a female chimpanzee as a substitute candidate, was selected for the flight from the group of six monkeys on the day before take-off due to his ideal state of health and was brought aboard the spaceship at 7:30 a.m. local time on January 31, 1961 in Cape Canaveral where it was connected to numerous sensors that monitored its condition.

The start then took place at 11:55 am, with Ham having to withstand 17 times his body weight during the ascent. In addition, there was a malfunction of a valve in the spaceship, so that the cabin pressure dropped sharply; however, since Ham had his own air supply in his spacesuit, this posed no greater danger. The spaceship reached an altitude of about 250 km, and Ham carried out the reaction tests assigned to him without any problems; he spent six minutes in weightlessness before landing at 12:12 p.m. almost 700 km from Cape Canaveral, where he had to endure another 14  g . When the landing capsule was recovered, it was found that water had entered it; however, it could still be saved from sinking into the Atlantic. Ham was rewarded with an apple and an orange for his work.

After its use, it was passed on to the Washington Zoo, where it lived for 17 years until September 25, 1980. After the criticism of animal rights activists at the solitary keeping, he was moved from there to the North Carolina Zoological Park in Asheboro, where he died of old age on January 18, 1983. After his death, his body was preserved at the Smithsonian Institute and on loan to the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

See also

Web links

Commons : Ham (Chimpanzee)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Upper Air Rocket Summary V-2. February 20, 1947, accessed May 10, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b Space history: The animal heroes of space travel. Zeit Online, March 25, 2011, accessed May 10, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b Animals in Space on history.nasa.gov
  4. ^ Research and Development Phase of Project Mercury Part II-a on history.nasa.gov
  5. ↑ Harold A. Skaarup: Florida Warplanes, page 12, ISBN 978-1450264440
  6. ↑ The Story of the Space Chimps on spacechimps.com
  7. ↑ Colin Burgess: Freedom 7: The Historic Flight of Alan B. Shepard, Jr. Springer International Publishing, 2014, chap. 2 , p. 29 (English, springer.com [PDF; 3.3 MB ; accessed on January 5, 2018]).
  8. ↑ https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Zahlen-bitte-6-M Minuten-Schwerelosigkeit-fuer-Ham- 3610816.html
  9. ↑ Ham on findagrave.com
  10. ↑ Ham 'n' Apple on splashdowns.de
  11. ^ Colin Burgess, Chris Dubbs: Animals in Space: From Research Rockets to the Space Shuttle, pp. 255-257, ISBN 978-0-387-36053-9
  12. ↑ One Small Step. The Story of the Spce Chimps