Squirrel monkey Baker posed on rocket

Photos show historic moments of animals and humans flying to space

Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos are dueling to reach suborbital space. Two monkeys beat them to it 62 years ago.

1959The squirrel monkey Baker, often referred to as “Miss Baker,” clings to a model of the Jupiter missile that launched her and a rhesus monkey named Able into space on May 28, 1959. Baker lived until 1984.
Photograph by NASA
ByMichael Greshko
Edited byAmr Alfiky
July 19, 2021
7 min read

Before Bezos and Branson, there were Baker and Able.

In the early morning hours of May 28, 1959, a Jupiter missile launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, sending Baker and Able—two small monkeys—hurtling across the sky like a shooting star. Over the next 16 minutes, Baker, an 11-ounce squirrel monkey from Peru, and Able, a rhesus monkey born in Independence, Kansas, flew 1,700 miles and reached an altitude of 360 miles above Earth’s surface, higher than the Hubble Space Telescope orbits today.

The snug housing that secured Baker during her spaceflight sat within the nose cone of a Jupiter missile.
1959The snug housing that secured Baker during her spaceflight sat within the nose cone of a Jupiter missile. After their May 1959 launch, Baker and her fellow passenger Able were recovered unharmed in the waters off Florida.
Photograph by NASA

After several minutes of weightlessness, the monkeys fell back to Earth in the missile’s nose cone, with Baker snug in a canister not much bigger than a large Thermos. The pair experienced forces 38 times stronger than Earth’s gravity during the descent. When they splashed down in the waters off Florida, Baker and Able made history. For more than a decade, the United States had been trying to send monkeys into space and return them safely, but all had either died in flight or within two hours of landing. Baker and Able, however, came back alive and well—the first primates to survive a trip to space.

A Soviet dog named Laika rode Sputnik 2 into space on November 3, 1957, becoming the first living creature in orbit.
1957Dubbed "Muttnik" in the U.S. press, a Soviet dog named Laika rode Sputnik 2 into space on November 3, 1957, becoming the first living creature in orbit. During and after the flight, Soviet officials claimed that Laika had survived for several days. However, she likely died hours after launch from overheating.
Photograph by Sovfoto, Universal Images Group via Getty Images


Able died in a medical procedure days later, but Baker lived until 1984, when she was buried at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. People leave bananas at her grave to this day.

Neil Armstrong poses for a poses for a portrait with an X-15 rocket plane.
1960Before he commanded Gemini 8 and Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong was a test pilot for the ultimate experimental aircraft: the X-15 rocket plane. A joint project of the U.S. military, NASA, and private industry, the X-15 pushed the boundaries of flight beyond six times the speed of sound. Eight X-15 pilots flew the craft more than 50 miles above Earth’s surface, the U.S. boundary of space. Armstrong, however, isn’t one of them.
Photograph by NASA

Now, nearly 600 people have ventured more than 50 miles above Earth’s surface—the U.S. boundary for space—and human spaceflight is entering a new phase. Flights beyond Earth are becoming cheaper and more frequent, and private enterprises are aiming to send more people to space than ever before.

What does the future hold for human journeys beyond Earth’s atmosphere? How often will future generations fly to orbit and beyond? How far will explorers travel?

To get a sense of how space exploration got here, and where it may be going, National Geographic looked back through more than six decades’ worth of spaceflight images, highlighting historic moments in humans’ forays into the inky void.   

Chimpanzee Ham is seen with Trainers.
January 1961Before launching human astronauts, NASA used chimpanzees and other primates to test its Mercury capsule. On January 31, 1961, a three-year-old chimpanzee named Ham lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, flying 400 miles downrange in an arc that took him 158 miles high and safely back to Earth. Ham’s only mid-flight injury: a bruised nose.
Photograph by NASA
Alan Shepard was the second human and first American to travel into space.
May 1961On May 5, 1961, U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard became the second human and first American to travel into space. After his historic flight aboard the Freedom 7 capsule, a helicopter from the U.S.S.Lake Champlain fished him Shepard and his capsule out of the western Atlantic Ocean and deposited them on the deck of the ship.
Photograph by NASA
Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov performed the world's first spacewalk during the Voskhod 2 mission.
1965On March 18, 1965, Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov performed the world's first spacewalk during the Voskhod 2 mission. During this same mission, Leonov also created the first work of art in space: a colored-pencil sketch of an orbital sunrise.
Photograph by Sovfoto, Universal Images Group, Getty Images
Astronaut Mark C. Lee floats freely as he tests emergency safety gear during a 1994 space shuttle flight.
1994Backdropped against a massive wall of white clouds, astronaut Mark C. Lee floats freely as he tests emergency safety gear during a 1994 space shuttle flight. From 1981 to 2011, NASA’s space shuttle fleet flew 133 successful missions, including flights to repair the Hubble Space Telescope and build theInternational Space Station.
Photograph by NASA
U.S. space tourist Dennis Tito celebrates after his landing in Kazakhstan.
2001U.S. space tourist Dennis Tito celebrates after his landing near the town of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, on May 6, 2001. Tito was the world’s first space tourist, having paid the Russian space agency Roscosmos to train with cosmonauts and make a nearly eight-day visit to the International Space Station.
Photograph by Alexander Nemenov, AFP, Getty Images
Experimental aircraft designer Burt Rutan shows off SpaceShipOne.
2004Experimental aircraft designer Burt Rutan shows off SpaceShipOne, a prototype space plane, at his workshop in Mojave, California. SpaceShipOne was the first non-government vehicle piloted tomore than 100 kilometers above Earth’s surface, winning Rutan the Ansari X Prize on October 4, 2004.
Photograph by James A. Sugar, National Geographic Image Collection
A chase plane follows SpaceShipOne after it completed its first flight beyond 100 kilometers.
A chase plane follows SpaceShipOne after it completed its first flight beyond 100 kilometers on June 21, 2004. SpaceShipOne hitched a ride to 50,000 feet on the underbelly of a high-altitude aircraft called White Knight before releasing and using its own rocket engine to fly the rest of the way to space.
Photograph by Jim Campbell, Pool, Getty Images
New Shepard NS-14 lifts off from Launch Site One in West Texas, on January 14, 2021.
January 2021Blue Origin, the space company founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, has worked for years to build reusable rockets, starting with a small suborbital vehicle called New Shepard for tourists and science experiments. To date, New Shepard has flown 15 uncrewed missions, including the pictured launch in January 2021. On July 20, 2021, New Shepard will take up its first human passengers—including Bezos.
Photograph by Blue Origin
British billionaire Richard Branson floats weightlessly aboard Virgin Galactic Unity 22 Spaceflight.
July 2021Billionaire Richard Branson has spent 17 years trying to commercialize a bigger, upgraded version of SpaceShipOne. On July 11, 2021, his company Virgin Galactic took a major step toward that goal when the company’s V.S.S. Unity space plane flew two pilots and four crew members, including Branson, more than 50 miles above Earth’s surface.
Photograph by Virgin Galactic

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