Overall: 40 in. tall x 20 in. wide x 16 in. long (101.6 x 50.8 x 40.64cm)
Type:
SPACECRAFT-Crewed-Test Vehicles
Country of Origin:
United States of America
Summary:
Prior to the flights of astronauts in Project Mercury, the first U.S. human spaceflight program, chimpanzees were used to better understand the effects of acceleration and weightlessness. Instead of a spacesuit, these chimps had a pressurized capsule that allowed them to breathe even in case of a failure of spacecraft cabin pressure. The chimp was strapped into a retaining harness inside the capsule and had to operate a system of levers and lights to test its reactions to flight. It was rewarded with banana pellets or a drink of water, or punished with mild electrical shocks, for taking the right or wrong actions.
This primate capsule is installed in the spacecraft launched on the Mercury-Redstone 2 mission, but was not used for the chimpanzee "Ham" on that flight, which took place on January 31, 1961. NASA transferred this capsule, installed in the MR-2 spacecraft, to the Smithsonian in 1967.
