Animals in space 1959 flight. On 28 May 1959, aboard Jupiter IRBM AM-18, were a 7-pound (3.18 kg) American-born rhesus monkey, Able, from Independence, Kansas, and an 11-ounce (310-gram) squirrel monkey from Peru, Baker. The monkeys rode in the nose cone of the missile to an altitude of 360 miles (579 km) and a distance of 1,700 miles (2,735 km) down the Atlantic Missile Range from Cape Canaveral, Florida. They withstood forces 38 times the normal pull of gravity and were weightless for about 9 minutes. A top speed of 10,000 mph (16,000 km/h) was reached during their 16-minute flight. The monkeys survived
Miss Baker the Naval Aerospace Medical Center in Pensacola, Florida until 1971. In 1971, Miss Baker moved to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where she entertained museum visitors and drew 100–150 letters a day from schoolchildren. The 1977 birthday celebrations brought balloons, camera flashes, and the regular fare of cottage cheese for Miss Baker and Big George. Big George predeceased Miss Baker on January 8, 1979, and three months later, Norman, from the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, became her second mate in a ceremony presided over by Alabama District Court judge Dan McCoy. Miss Baker refused to