Catalyst
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
***