His survival would provide increased confidence that the vehicle was fit for manned orbital spaceflight.Įnos was rocketed into space from LC-14 at Cape Canaveral Florida on Wednesday, 29 November 1961. Trained for spaceflight along with his backups Duane, Jim, Rocky, and HAM, Enos would fly as a passenger aboard a Mercury spacecraft. Enter the astro-chimp Enos (which is Hebrew for “man”). Just as HAM’s flight preceded the successful suborbital missions of Shepard and Grissom, NASA wanted to orbit a chimp prior to the first attempt at manned orbital flight. Flying his Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft, Grissom was the second member of the original Mercury Seven Astronauts to enter space. Essentially a duplication of MR-3, USAF Captain Virgil Ivan “Gus” Grissom became America’s second astronaut. Shepard’s pioneering spaceflight was followed by Mercury-Redstone 4 (MR-4) in July of 1961. became America’s first astronaut during the flight of Mercury-Redstone 3 (MR-3). Flying aboard his Freedom 7 Mercury spacecraft, USN Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. Known as Mercury-Redstone 2 (MR-2), this mission was a prelude to America’s first manned suborbital spaceflight in May of the same year. These manned missions were preceded by animal flights in which chimpanzees served as surrogates for human crew.Ī chimp named HAM successfully flew a suborbital Mercury mission in January of 1961. It consisted of two (2) suborbital and four (4) orbital manned missions flown between May 1961 and May 1963. Project Mercury was the United States’ first manned spaceflight program. This important mission paved the way for America’s first manned orbital spaceflight in February of 1962. Fifty-one years ago this month, a Cameroonian chimpanzee by the name of Enos successfully flew a two-orbit mission around the Earth during the flight of Mercury-Atlas 5 (MA-5).
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