Primate Capsule, Mercury

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.