By Christina Harrison

Published: Friday, 23 September 2022 at 12:00 am

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In July 1969, Apollo 11 launched into space and Neil Armstrong and ‘Buzz’ Aldrin successfully performed the first crewed lunar landing. Television images of the men taking humankind’s very first steps on the moon’s surface were broadcast into the homes of millions around the world. But there were many animals that paved the way to this momentous occasion, and many that furthered astronautical studies afterwards.

What animals have been into space?

The first animal in space was launched in 1947. And, perhaps surprisingly, it was the humble fruit fly. American scientists were trying to establish the impact that cosmic radiation might potentially have on astronauts in the future – they chose flies because they are genetically similar to humans.

A V-2 ballistic missile, recovered from the Nazis at the end of world war II, was loaded with the fruit flies and travelled 109km into the air – the distance at which space officially begins. On its descent back to Earth, a capsule containing the flies was parachuted down to New Mexico.

On opening the capsule, the scientists found the flies alive, with no evidence of the effects of radiation. It was the start of a long line of astronaut animals to come.

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Incredibly, 32 monkeys and apes have been to space, including the rhesus macaque, pig-tailed monkey, cynomolgus monkey, squirrel-tailed monkey and chimpanzee.

The very first was a rhesus macaque called Albert II. In 1949, he reached 134km, but died on impact when re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere due to a parachute failure.

He was preceded a year earlier by Albert I, who suffocated within his cramped capsule before it had even left the ground.

The first great ape in space was Ham, a chimpanzee launched into space by NASA on 31 January 1961. Ham returned safely to Earth, where he lived until 1983.