New Mexico Museum of Space History
Near Alamogordo, New Mexico
On the slope of the Sacramento Mountains above Alamogordo, a gold-glass building houses one of the more consequential pieces of American space history: the grave of Ham, a chimpanzee from Cameroon who was trained at Holloman Air Force Base and launched one hundred and fifty-seven miles into space on January thirty-first, nineteen sixty-one, just over three months before Alan Shepard made the same trip. Ham proved a human could function in space. His training program was run by an Alamogordo resident named Edward Dittmer, who suited him up and placed him in the Mercury capsule.
The New Mexico Museum of Space History was established in nineteen seventy-six, and is now a Smithsonian affiliate, to document the region's central role in rocket testing and space medicine. White Sands Missile Range, less than forty miles away, was where the first American V-two rockets fired in nineteen forty-six. Ham is buried in the museum's rocket garden.
