In the late 1950s and ‘60s, at the height of the Space Race with the Soviet Union, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States conducted a series of missions known collectively as Project Mercury. As NASA’s first human spaceflight program, Project Mercury’s ultimate goal was to investigate man’s ability to survive in space by putting a man in orbit and bringing him back alive. Before sending a human astronaut into space, however, NASA experimented with primates, launching specimens from several different species of monkey into space between 1948 and 1961. Arguably, the most famous of these was Ham the chimpanzee, whose successful space voyage paved the way for Alan Sheppard to become the first American in space.
Though publicly acknowledged as the first chimp in space, Ham was, in actuality, not the first. Most civilians are unaware that in March 1960, ten months before Ham’s well-publicized space flight, NASA sent a chimpanzee named Sera into space on a secret mission known as Mercury-Jupiter 2 (MJ-2), whose objective was to study the primate’s performance in high altitude conditions. The public was told that the Mercury-Jupiter missions had been cancelled for budgetary reasons; however, the missions proceeded as planned, until a malfunction during MJ-2 caused the Mercury capsule containing the chimp to fall out of orbit. The capsule was lost in space and never recovered.
This formerly classified document, discovered in the mission archives of NASA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., provides a summary of the mission.
Mission: Mercury-Jupiter 2
Launch Pad: LC-14
Vehicle: Jupiter (2)
Crew: Sera the chimp
Milestones:
Not applicable
Payload:
Spacecraft number 10, Launch vehicle MJ-2
Mission Objective:
Maximum dynamic pressure test
Launch:
March 14, 1960
Landing:
Not applicable
Mission Highlights:
Mission was a failure.
Excerpt from the conspiracy blog “The Truth is Out There,” accessed 18 July 2013
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