21 a
[NASA caption] Animals handlers from the Aeromedical Field Laboratory, Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, release a chimpanzee from its flight couch after training for the Mercury Redstone 2 launch at Cape Canaveral, Fla. The MR-2 launch is one of a series of launches scheduled by NASA in its manned orbital flight program, Project Mercury.
The MR-2 flight test is designed to provide a test of the Mercury spacecraft’s environmental control and recovery system.

21 b
MR-2 launched on January 31, 1961, carrying Ham, a four-year-old- old male chimpanzee. The suborbital flight lasted a total of 16 minutes and 39 seconds, and carried the spacecraft 420 nautical miles from Launch Complex 5 at Cape Canaveral. The spacecraft reached a maximum altitude of 157 statute miles.

“The MR-2 launch was delayed approximately four hours because of inverter overheating. When the launch finally occurred, at 11:55 p.m., Ham was subjected to a 6-g accelerative force followed by a momentary exposure to 17- g’s when the rockets on the escape system fired” (https://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/Mission/miss/164).

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[NASA caption] The Mercury Redstone 2 capsule floats in the Sea, 420 status miles from Cape Canaveral, Fla. A marine helicopter from the USS Donner airlifted it back to its flight deck. The chimpanzee Ham survived the 5,000 mile an hour flight in fine shape.

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These rare contact sheets (used at NASA Headquarters in Washington to consult available photographs of the mission) cover all aspects of Ham’s mission, from training to liftoff and recovery.

Seven color views of the Earth from space photographed during Ham’s suborbital flight by the onboard automatic Maurer 220G camera loaded with GAF Super Anscochrome T-100 Superior ASA 64 color reversal are included.
Three extremely rare in-flight views taken by the pilot observer camera show Ham in the capsule.

“The Mercury-Redstone 2 (MR-2) mission was the prelude to Alan Shepard’s suborbital space flight. [...] The capsule used on MR-2 had many new innovations that had not been previously flight-tested. These included an environmental control system, an attitude stabilization control system, a ‘closed loop’ abort sensing system, and a pneumatic landing bag. [...]The telemetry included information on heating, pressure, noise, and vibrations. [...] Ham experienced weightlessness for 7.5 minutes during the flight. [...] The science objectives of the MR-2 flight included animal verification of a successful flight, collection of data on the physical and psychological demands of a space flight, evaluation of spacecraft environmental control system and bioinstrumentation, and completion of a dynamic test of operational procedures and training of support personnel. Ham’s flight on MR-2 met all of its objectives, and was a significant accomplishment toward manned U.S. space flight. The results of the flight showed no significant change in Ham’s physiological state or psychomotor performance. The mission’s success increased the confidence of the astronauts and capsule engineers by proving that the demands of space flight would not be excessive for humans. The flight also demonstrated that young chimpanzees could be trained to be highly reliable subjects for space flight studies” (https://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/Mission/miss/164).