Miss Baker

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Miss Baker on a model of the Jupiter rocket (1959)
Miss Baker in the Capsule (1959)

Miss Baker ( 1957 in Iquitos / Peru ; - November 29, 1984 in Auburn , Alabama / United States ) was a female common squirrel monkey who was the first primate to survive a flight into space together with the rhesus monkey Able . They took off on May 28, 1959 with the Jupiter AM-18 mission from the Cape Canaveral AFS launch complex 26 , reached a summit height of 480 km and after 16 minutes watered 2,400 km in the sea off Puerto Rico , where they were recovered by the USS Kiowa .

1957-1959

Miss Baker was a tomboy born in 1957 and was purchased by the U.S. military along with 25 other monkeys from a pet store in Miami. It was selected because of its good tolerability with regard to the anesthetics used and its tolerance to the narrow capsule. After she and Able were selected for the flight, they were both named after the first two letters of the U.S. military letter alphabet . The take-off took place on the night of May 28, 1959 at 2:35 a.m. local time, after a 15-minute flight the capsule watered about 400 km southeast of San Juan on Puerto Rico . She was there by frogmen the US Navy recovered and at 5:08 aboard the USS Kiowa opened. During the flight, up to 38 g acted on Miss Baker, which led to brief interruptions in the circulation. Both monkeys survived the actual space flight with a few minor cuts and abrasions on their helmets, otherwise in good health. However, Able passed away a few days later from an electrode removal complication. The flight sparked some demonstrations by animal rights activists who saw animal cruelty in the experiments . There was a demonstration in front of the US embassy in London . The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals awarded Miss Baker as a "replica" on the grounds that her commitment to research had shown that the "carefully scientifically controlled" use of animals as pioneers in space for "humans and animals together useful ”.

1959-1984

Miss Baker, around 1979
Grave stone of Miss Baker, on the often a banana is

After the mission was over, Miss Baker came to the US Navy Aviation Medical School at Naval Air Station Pensacola , where she was "married" to her conspecific Big George . Because of the high cost of keeping it, it was donated to the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville , Alabama in 1971 , where both became part of the exhibition and stars.

She died in 1984 as the oldest known squirrel monkey of kidney failure and was given a grave on the museum grounds.

Web links

Commons : Miss Baker  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d Colin Burgess, Chris Dubbs: Animals in Space: From Research Rockets to the Space Shuttle, Springer 2007, ISBN 9780387496788 , pp. 130-141.
  2. a b 1959: Monkeys survive space mission , BBC On this Day, May 28, 2008 status (accessed May 18, 2014).
  3. Monkey Baker is Honored by ASPCA. The Dispatch (Lexington, North Carolina). June 30, 1959.
  4. ^ Entry Miss Baker , in Find A Grave, as of March 15, 2005 (accessed May 18, 2014).