Mercury-Little-Joe 2

Little Joe 2 (LJ-2) was used to test the Mercury capsule as part of the Mercury program. The rhesus monkey Sam was housed in the capsule (Mercury Boilerplate), with which the aim was to test the effects of a flight on humans. The name Sam comes from the initials of the institution responsible for the biological experiments during the Mercury program, the US Air Force School of Aviation Medicine. In addition to Sam, the capsule contained other biological samples such as seeds and various types of cells. In addition, the capsule was tested. In particular, the capsule was separated using the rescue rocket.

The launch took place on December 4, 1959, at 11:15 a.m. Eastern Time (ET) from Wallops Island, Virginia. The summit height was 85 kilometers and the maximum distance was 312 km. The flight duration was 11 minutes and 6 seconds. The weightlessness lasts for 3 minutes and 13 seconds. The Mercury capsule (Mercury Boilerplate) was recovered from the USS Borie along with the live monkey Sam.

The psychomotor tasks that Sam had performed excellently during the preparation for the flight were only partially completed during the flight. He had been trained to press a small lever when a red light came on, but in the final phase of the flight he responded less and less to the triggering stimulus. Even after low-dose electric shocks were administered to his feet, he did not resume activity. After the rescue, Sam appeared very hungry and reactive. He was medically examined and then taken to the NASA laboratory at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, where his female counterpart, the rhesus monkey Miss Sam, was also trained, before Sam was transferred to the monkey enclosure at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas. He spent eleven more years in Brooks before Sam was given to the San Antonio Zoo. Apparently he died in 1978.