posted 01-31-2011 01:54 PM               

Fifty years ago, there was a space race -- a race the United States was losing to the communists.

Enter a hero, named Ham. The chimp would become the first hominid launched into outer space. And Ham wasn't just a passenger. He was taught to push a button once the light for re-entry came on. His mission set the stage for the one Alan Shepard would make May 5, 1961, aboard Freedom 7.

Monday is the 50th anniversary of when Ham the "astrochimp" launched into suborbital space inside a Mercury capsule.

Fifty years ago [today] an African-born astronaut made it into space ahead of Soviet pioneer Yuri Gagarin. His name was Ham, a chimpanzee born in July 1957 in the rainforests of what was then the French Cameroons. He was bought by the US Air Force to be used in early space flight experiments for $457 -- not a bad investment as it turned out.

posted 01-31-2011 03:27 PM               

On the morning of January 31, 1961, a 5-year-old chimpanzee named "Ham" ate a breakfast of baby cereal, condensed milk, vitamins, and half an egg. Then the playful 37-pound primate went out into the Cape Canaveral light and made aeronautic history: Aboard a NASA space capsule -- and traveling almost 160 miles above the Earth -- he became the first chimp in space. The launch's success helped ratchet up even further the already-frantic contest for scientific supremacy between the U.S. and the Soviet Union -- and briefly made Ham something of a star.

Here, on the 50th anniversary of that momentous, 16-minute "headlong trip through outer space's underbelly" (as Time magazine called the flight), LIFE.com presents rare and previous unpublished photographs taken before, during, and after Ham's wild ride -- pictures that capture an era when technology, politics, ideology, and propaganda converged in an era-defining struggle known as the Space Race.