Jan 19 1983
From The Space Library
The press reported the death in North Carolina at the age of "about 26" of Ham, the chimpanzee sent on a Mercury capsule into suborbital flight January 21, 1961, to prepare for the flight of Alan B. Shepard, Jr., first U.S. astronaut.
Ham, named after the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center in New Mexico, retired from the space program in 1963 to live at the National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., and after 1981 in the North Carolina Zoological Park. His trip in "a very primitive space capsule on an experimental suborbital run" was attended with "excitement and suspense," even dread, because no one could predict whether he would survive the shocks of the trip or undergo emotional trauma.
"Ham rose to the occasion and took it all in stride," the report said. "Never mind that the capsule, through an error, had been shot 40 miles higher than planned or that it had landed 30 miles past the target area where a fleet awaited it or that it had been traveling 5,000 miles an hour, 800 miles faster than planned. ... During the time radio signals were received the chimp pushed various levers and performed other behavior tasks assigned him." (W Post, Jan 21/83, A-16; Jan 26/83, B-3; Jan 27/83, A-22)
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