Primate Capsule, Mercury

The Mercury Project was the first U.S. human spaceflight program, with the aim of putting one man in orbit. Prior to the flights of the astronauts, chimpanzees were used to better understand the effects of acceleration and weightlessness on the human body. 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 couch 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 was used during the Mercury program, but it is not known whether it was on one of the two 1961 chimpanzee spaceflights. In 1971 the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston transferred this artifact to the Smithsonian.