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A simple chimpanzee from Cameroon makes space history and becomes a national hero.
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Transcript
Not many people realize that an American hero and space explorer is buried and memorialized at the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo. Although he was born of humble origins in Cameroon, Africa, he would be laid to rest as a national hero in New Mexico. But this hero was not known as one of the people who pioneered American space exploration … in fact this hero wasn’t even a human being.
HAM, short for Holloman Aerospace Medical, was a chimpanzee highly trained at Holloman Air Force Base for sub-orbital space flight. One of sixty- five specially trained chimps, HAM was selected as the best suited for the mission of orbiting Earth. On January 31, 1961, HAM was secured into a pod in the nose of a Redstone rocket and launched into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
HAM reached an altitude of 155 miles above Earth at speeds reaching 5,800 miles per hour. After returning sa...
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