Prior to the flights of astronauts in Project Mercury, the first U.S. human spaceflight program, chimpanzees were used to better understand the effects of acceleration and weightlessness. Instead of a spacesuit, these chimps had a pressurized capsule that allowed them to breathe even in case of a failure of spacecraft cabin pressure. The chimp was strapped into a retaining harness inside the capsule and had to operate a system of levers and lights to test its reactions to flight. It was rewarded with banana pellets or a drink of water, or punished with mild electrical shocks, for taking the right or wrong actions.
This primate capsule is installed in the spacecraft launched on the Mercury-Redstone 2 mission, but was not used for the chimpanzee "Ham" on that flight, which took place on January 31, 1961. NASA transferred this capsule, installed in the MR-2 spacecraft, to the Smithsonian in 1967.
This object is not on display at the National Air and Space Museum. It is either on loan or in storage.
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