Country of Origin: United States of America
Dimensions:
3-D Test: 12.7 x 35.6cm (5 x 14 in.)
Materials:
Preserved Rhesus Monkey
This is Able, a preserved female Rhesus Monkey. She flew inside a Jupiter nose cone with Baker, a female squirrel monkey on May 28, 1959, in an Army experiment designed to test the biomedical effects of space travel. Launched from Cape Canaveral, they reached a maximum altitude of 300 miles and travelled downrange 2,000 miles at speeds reaching 10,000 mph before reentering the Earth's atmosphere and being recovered by Navy ships. Both monkeys survived the trip well, but Able died from the anesthesia during a routine post-flight operation.
The Army transferred Able to NASM in 1960 and the National Museum of Natural History preserved her.
Transferred from the Army Ballistic Missile Agency
