On this day in space! May 28, 1959: Able & Baker are 1st monkeys to survive spaceflight

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On May 28, 1959, two monkeys named Able and Baker became the first monkeys to go to space and make it back alive.

On May 28, 1959, two monkeys named Able and Baker became the first monkeys to go to space and make it back alive.

Miss Able was a rhesus monkey from Kansas, and her crewmate Miss Baker was a squirrel monkey from Peru. They were tucked inside tight capsules, covered in various sensors and electrodes and situated inside the nose cone of the rocket.

Able and Baker: The First Primates to Survive Spaceflight in Photos

A view of NASA's Phoenix Mars lander covered in dust as seen from an on onboard camera after months on the Martian surface. (Image credit: Army Ballistic Missile Agency)

The two space monkeys lifted off on a Jupiter rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and reached an altitude of over 300 miles. The whole flight lasted 16 minutes, and they got to experience weightlessness for 9 minutes.

The capsule reached a top speed of 10,000 miles per hour. It traveled about 1,700 miles downrange before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean near Puerto Rico.

Both monkeys survived the trip to space and back. However, Able died in surgery a few days later from a bad reaction to anesthesia while doctors were working to remove electrodes from under her skin.

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.