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Space Monkey Gordo, Able & Baker animal astronauts, Cape Canaveral rocket launch

$ 3.69

Availability: 75 in stock
  • Condition: New
  • Type: NASA Patch
  • All returns accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted

    Description

    Now being offered as a set, 1 each of the two patches shown:
    A big 5.9 by 5.8-inch patch to mark the flight of the Bioflight 2 mission into space with the "monkeynauts" Able and Baker.  Able, a Rhesus monkey, and Baker, a squirrel monkey, were launched aboard a Jupiter rocket from Complex 26B at Cape Canaveral on 28 May 1959.  The sub-orbital flight only lasted about 15-minutes, but it helped paved the way for later flights by astronauts.  Since this was an "all female" crew, the patch is pink!  A US Army Jupiter rocket is also depicted in the middle of the patch.
    Space monkey "Gordo" patch, first monkey launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.  The Bioflight 1 mission was launched on 13 December 1958 from Launch Complex 26B aboard a Jupiter rocket.  Gordo, a male squirrel monkey was the passenger, he made a suborbital flight, spending several minutes of weightlessness in space before reentering the atmosphere.  Upon splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean his mission took a tragic turn; a flotation device on the nosecone he was in failed to operate and the nosecone sank before the Navy recovery force could reach him---he remains lost at sea to this day.  The patch is 4.5-inches tall and 3.2-inches wide at the base, and is in the shape of the Jupiter nosecone that carried Gordo into space.