Space pioneer Albert II.
It was 65 years ago today that the world’s first space-traveling primate was launched into history.
Many brave men and women have contributed in the quest to put human beings into space. But before those astronauts had an opportunity to make history, there was a long line of other creatures that paved the way for manned spaceflight.
A cylinder full of fruit flies, launched on February 20, 1947, aboard a V-2 rocket captured from the Germans after the Second World War and modified by the United States Air Force Aeromedical Laboratory to carry scientific equipment and sensors, were the first Earth organisms to travel into space, reaching an altitude of 68 miles (109 km).
On June 11, 1948, the first mammal, a rhesus monkey named Albert, was launched atop another V-2. Rhesus monkeys are known for their ability to survive in a wide range of habitats, and Albert was chosen to test the effects of radiation that future astronauts would be exposed to at high altitudes. Albert’s flight only reached an altitude of 39 miles (63 km), well short of the Kármán line of 62 miles (100 km) that marks the beginning of space, and the pioneering Albert unfortunately suffocated to death when his oxygen supply malfunctioned.
Albert II gets suited up.
Albert II is launched into space.
And so it was that Albert II, another rhesus, came to occupy a sealed capsule in the nose cone of a V-2 rocket on June 14, 1949. Anesthetized and implanted with sensors, Albert II was launched from White Sands, New Mexico, accompanied by an array of instruments to measure cosmic and solar radiation, temperature, pressure and other conditions in the ionosphere. Soaring to an altitude of 83 miles (134 km), Albert II thus became the first primate to cross the threshold of space. Sadly, the capsule’s parachute failed to eject upon re-entry and poor Albert II plummeted to Earth, killed on impact.
Subsequent V-2 launches between 1949 and 1951 resulted in the deaths of Alberts III through VI, but each flight contributed vital information that would make eventual spaceflight by humans possible. The first monkeys to enter space and survive the return to Earth were Able and Miss Baker, who flew together to a height of 360 miles (580 km) on May 28, 1959, aboard a Jupiter rocket. Their capsule landed 1,700 miles (2,736 km) downrange from the Eastern Space Missile Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and the pair was recovered in good health, paving the way for Yuri Gargarin (on April 12, 1961) and Alan Shepard (on May 5, 1961) to become the first humans in space.
Because these early, experimental rocket launches were conducted in secrecy, the intrepid Albert II received no public notice at the time and his role in the history of manned space exploration has remained mostly unheralded.
But not today. Albert II, American space pioneer, we salute you and remember you with pride and gratitude.
