04. Were there really chimpanzees that went to space? When? What were their names, and what did they do? (A K2S Question)

From The Space Library

Yes, two chimpanzees were sent to space by the US. A chimpanzee Ham, was named after the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center, New Mexico, where the chimpanzees lived and also in honor of Holloman commander Lt. Col. Hamilton Blackshear. Ham's mission was to prove that live animals aboard a spacecraft could carry out their jobs during all phases of spaceflight including launch, flight in weightlessness, and re-entry. Ham performed a sub-orbital flight inside a Mercury 5 capsule atop a Redstone rocket from Cape Canaveral. The first primate and the first living being sent into orbit around Earth by the US was chimpanzee Enos. Enos successfully performed all his jobs atop an Atlas 5 rocket and completed two orbits before being brought down on February 20, 1962.

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Answer provided by Bijal Thakore

Question and Answer extracted from the book Kids to Space - by Lonnie Schorer

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