A simple chimpanzee from Cameroon makes space history and becomes a
national hero.
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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 safely to earth, HAM was proclaimed a
national hero by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration.
Colonel John Paul Stapp said “We owe HAM a debt… and should be
thankful.” HAM retired from the space program in 1963 and spent his
golden years at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. and later, the North
Carolina Zoological Park, where he died in 1980.
Today, our hero HAM is enshrined with a Memorial Garden at the New
Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo.