Miss Baker
| Miss Baker | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Space pioneer | |
| Born | 1957 Iquitos, Peru |
| Died | November 29, 1984 (aged 27) Auburn University clinic, Auburn, Alabama |
|
Time in space
|
16 minutes |
| Missions | Jupiter AM-18 |
Miss Baker (1957 – November 29, 1984) was a squirrel monkey who became, along with rhesus monkey Miss Able, one of the first two animals launched into space by the United States and recovered alive.
All previous United States efforts at launching monkeys to space had met with the animals' demise from suffocation or parachute failure, and Soviet Union efforts fared little better, to the chagrin of animal rights activists.
Preceding Baker, the Soviet Union recovered two dogs, the first mammals to be recovered from suborbital space flight, from an altitude of 101 kilometers (331,000 ft) on July 22, 1951, and subsequently recovered some other dogs.
The United States flew some monkeys and mice by Aerobee rocket to heights below the edge of space beginning in 1951.
The squirrel monkey who was to become known as Miss Baker was purchased along with 25 other squirrel monkeys at a pet shop in Miami, Florida, and brought to the Naval Aviation Medical School in Pensacola. Fourteen of the candidates tolerated confinement for periods up to 24 hours, electrodes all over their bodies, and monitoring at all hours. Miss Baker "stood out from the rest because of her intelligence and loving, docile manner", relayed Burgess and Dubbs. For this, and her apparent pleasure at being handled with tender loving care, she earned the nickname TLC.
With experiments imminent, the Army named their monkey "Alpha," and the Navy followed with "Bravo," names taken directly from the phonetic alphabet. Before flight, though, the names changed to the first letters of the antiquated Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet.
Miss Baker wore a helmet lined with rubber and chamois leather plus a jacket for launch, in addition to a respiration meter affixed to her nose with model cement, and she was fitted into a snug capsule of shoebox size, 9¾ × 12½ × 6¾ inches (24.8 × 31.8 × 17.1 cm) insulated with rubber and fiberglass. Life support was an oxygen bottle with a pressure valve, and lithium hydroxide to absorb exhaled carbon dioxide and moisture.
...
Wikipedia