Here's a news clip I came across about the first monkeys to survive being shot into space. Able, a rhesis monkey and Baker, a squirrel monkey.
These monkeys were not the first creatures to survive a trip into space. In 1947 the U.S. successfully sent (and retrieved) live fruit flies into space, one year later they began trying to send monkeys (after successfully sending mice, of course). Unfortunately, all the monkey flights failed for over a decade. One rocket exploded, two parachutes failed to open, one monkey's capsule descended into the ocean but the flotation device failed and it was never recovered, and one monkey returned to Earth safely but the shuttle didn't make it high enough to get to space. While America was having no luck with monkeys, the USSR was having fantastic luck with dogs. They managed to bring over 30 dogs back alive from suborbital flights and in 1957 a dog named Laika became the first animal to orbit the planet (she did not survive).
Able and Baker were sent up in 1959. Here's a picture of Baker inside her capsule, it was approx. the size of a small thermos:
Sadly, Able died a few days after her infamous adventure but Baker lived until 1984 at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center where she would get 100-150 letters a day from school children. More than 300 people attended Baker's funeral when she died of kidney failure & to this day people will leave bananas at her grave. Able's body is stuffed and on display at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
Since Able and Baker, NASA has sent fifteen monkeys into space, including Enos (the first chimp to orbit the Earth) and Multik (who died the day after touch down and raised significant questions about the ethics of using animals for testing. NASA continues biological experiments aboard space shuttles, but there have been no more primate missions since Multik).
