![]() ![]() ![]() The tracking teams included several Mercury astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut into space on a sub-orbital flight in May, 1961, was assigned to Bermuda. Supporting the mission were 18 tracking stations, including the Cooper’s Island facility in Bermuda. Prior to American first manned orbital mission in 1962, the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) announced that, “The men in charge of Project Mercury have insisted on orbiting a chimpanzee as a necessary preliminary checkout of the entire Mercury programme before risking a human astronaut.” In his classic book about the Mercury man-into-space programme, “The Right Stuff”, Tom Wolfe describes the non-stop testing and training of the six “finalist” chimps in gruesome detail, calling the animals “stringy-looking” as a result. Not every chimp that rode the sled came out alive. Chimps were loaded into a chair or capsule, blasted off, then stopped in about two seconds. The Cameroon chimps underwent training that their human counterparts couldn’t have completed, such as on dangerous rocket sleds. The US sent an expedition to Cameroon, Africa to obtain baby chimps for training. In the earliest days of the Cold War East/West space race, scientists were concerned about the effects of long periods of weightlessness on humans, so American and Russian scientists began using monkeys, chimps, dogs and other animals to determine if a living organism could be launched into space and return alive and unharmed. Though they arguably were better at their jobs than the astronauts who followed them, the “astro-chimps” of the Mercury space programme have largely been forgotten.īut at the time, “Enos” - who was examined by veterinarians and trainers at the Kindley Air Force Base hospital and paraded before the international media here - briefly became both a Bermuda and international celebrity. Enos, NASA’s pioneering space chimp, splashed down off Bermuda 59 years ago today after orbiting the earth twice and was brought to the island’s US Kindley Air Force Base to recuperate - paving the way for the manned orbital missions of the celebrated Mercury astronauts. ![]()
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