Powered by a LOX/kerosene engine producing 150,000 pounds of thrust, the US Air Force's Jupiter Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile was employed for several early scientific launches, paving the way for human spaceflight.
On May 28, 1959, Jupiter IRBM Mission AM-18 took a rhesus monkey named Able and a squirrel monkey named Baker on a 16-minute suborbital flight some 360 miles into space and 1,500 miles downrange from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Accompanying the simians was a collection of items including corn, fly larvae, fish eggs and human blood. The goal of the flight was to test the effects of high G forces, microgravity, and cosmic radiation on living passengers and biological samples.
Both monkeys survived the flight in good shape, riding in specially-designed padded restraints that allowed them to withstand up to 40g of acceleration during the trip. Biomedical telemetry revealed that both monkeys suffered levels of stress well within acceptable limits.
After landing within half a mile of the target point, an ocean tug recovered the nosecone and its contents without incident.
Able died just days after the mission during surgery to remove an infected electrode, but Baker lived on for another quarter century, finally succumbing to kidney failure in Huntsville, Alabama in 1984.
For more information:
- http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/jupiter.htm
- http://www.geocities.com/jupiter_irbm/other_missions.htm
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_%28missile%29
Author(s): BataanDeath March (unknown date prior to 2007 December 31)
