And finally: history is a funny thing, to put it baldly.  Just this week the space shuttle Endeavor returned to earth a little early, after a successful two-week mission to the International Space Station.

The astronauts – and school teacher – on board wouldn’t have made it there if it weren’t for the help of some of the space program’s early participants:

Chimps. That’s right – chimpanzees in space.

In 1961 NASA launched the Mercury Redstone Two into space, and with it a chimpanzee named Ham.

Ham was one of the chimps specially trained by rocket scientists to fly in tests of American space capsules.

Ham blasted off from Cape Canaveral and travelled 157 miles in a Mercury capsule before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean.

Three months later the first American human, Alan Shepard, followed him into space.

As we all know, being a pioneer isn’t easy. Larry Ciupik of the Adler Planetarium tells us the story of Ham and the Mercury project.