U.S. Space & Rocket Center Space Shot ride along with slides and tunnels, all under a canopy. The indoor area fosters imaginative play about a trip to Mars with a space ship and some cartoon "aliens". The U.S. Space & Rocket Center is also the resting place of Miss Baker, a squirrel monkey who flew on a suborbital test flight of the PGM-19 Jupiter rocket on May 28, 1959. Baker lived in a facility at the Center from 1971 until she died of kidney failure in November 1984. The Space & Rocket Center offers bus tours of Marshall Space Flight Center. The tour offers views
Animals in space rabbit to go into space. A 19 September 1959 launch, Jupiter AM-23, carried 2 frogs along with 12 mice but the rocket was destroyed during launch. On 19 August 1960 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 5 (also known as Korabl-Sputnik 2) which carried the dogs Belka and Strelka, along with a gray rabbit, 40 mice, 2 rats, and 15 flasks of fruit flies and plants. It was the first spacecraft to carry animals into orbit and return them alive. One of Strelka's pups, Pushinka, bred and born after her mission, was given as a present to Caroline Kennedy by Nikita