Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Well before the USSR launched the world’s first artificial satellite, in 1957 — freaking out virtually the entire Western hemisphere — and decades before the U.S. put Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon in 1969, Americans and Sovietsused animals to test the rigors and dangers that humans might face in outer space. Mice, rhesus monkeys, dogs — all sorts of creatures blasted off from earth strapped atop rockets and locked in test planes: many suffered injury; not a few of them died. Above: A chimp suits up during training at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, in 1961.