Lassie - Episode #200 - "Space Traveler" - Season 6 Ep. 18 - 01/10/1960

Timmy and a friend find a space capsule but when they open it they accidentally let the "space traveler" (a hamster) loose. When they find out the US military is looking for the capsule they decide to replace the missing hamster with Timmy's hamster "Alexander The Great". TRIVIA: In 1955, with both the United States and the Soviet Union building ballistic missiles that could launch objects into space, the "Space Race" - which traces its origins back to the 1930's - suddenly took on a very serious and very public image. In separate announcements, just four days apart, both nations publicly announced that they would launch artificial Earth satellites by 1957 or 1958. The Soviet Union beat the US with their October 4, 1957 launch of Sputnik 1. Nearly four months after the United States successfully launched its first satellite. The satellite actually measured three phenomena: cosmic ray and radiation levels, the temperature in the spacecraft and finally the frequency of collisions with micrometeorites. Before space rockets could carry humans, it was important to demonstrate that life could be maintained through the launch, flight, and recovery stages. Thus, animal subjects became critically important in the development of a space vehicle capable of supporting human life. On August 31, 1950, the U.S. launched a mouse into space but the rocket disintegrated upon reentry because the parachute system failed. The U.S. launched several other mice in the 1950s, while the USSR began putting dogs into orbit in 1951. Most animals were equipped with sensors (external and internal) to record radiation, biological changes, and stress - key components needed for future manned flight. Sadly, during this stage of development many animals were sacrificed in the pursuit of being the first to send men into orbit. Many animals - from mice to monkeys to dogs - were lost due to rocket explosions, rockets lost in orbit, or other events. Some died by design when the rockets employed did not have reentry capability. By the late 50's technology and knowledge had reached the point where two monkeys - Able and Baker - became the first two primates to survive a true spaceflight into orbit and back. On May 28, 1959 the monkeys rode in the nose cone of a missile to an altitude of 360 miles (579 km) and a distance of 1,700 miles (2,735 km) down the Atlantic Missile Range from Cape Canaveral, Florida. They withstood forces 38 times the normal pull of gravity and were weightless for about 9 minutes. A top speed of 10,000 mph (16,000 km/h) was reached during their 16-minute flight. The monkeys survived the flight in good condition. Able died four days after the flight from a reaction to anesthesia while undergoing surgery to remove an infected medical electrode. Baker lived until November 29, 1984, at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. On September 23, 2014, the SpaceX CRS-4 mission delivered 20 mice to live on the ISS (International Space Station) for study of the long-term effects of microgravity on the rodents.