What if the first American space travelers weren't humans at all, but tiny, brave monkeys?

The Day a Monkey Broke the Speed of Sound!

How a brave little rhesus monkey named Miss Baker zoomed to space and back

Brave monkey astronauts helped prove humans could survive space travel!

On September 18, 1962, something AMAZING happened that made scientists cheer around the world! A tiny rhesus monkey named Enos proved that living creatures could survive a supersonic flight AND work their brains at the same time!

But wait — let's rewind a bit! Before humans could zoom into space, scientists needed to know if our bodies could handle the wild ride. Enter the brave animal astronauts!

Earlier, on May 28, 1959, two monkeys named Able and Miss Baker became the FIRST animals to survive a trip to space and return safely. They blasted off on a Jupiter rocket, zoomed 300 miles high (that's higher than 30,000 football fields stacked up!), experienced weightlessness, and splashed back down in the ocean.

Miss Baker became a superstar! She lived at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Alabama and received hundreds of fan letters from kids every day. She even got fan mail asking for her 'pawtograph'!

💡 Miss Baker received up to 150 letters a day from fans around the world, and she even had her own special banana-shaped grave marker!