The future of space exploration seems to be close, as recent steps like the creation of the United States Space Force signal its approach. The path toward the final frontier was built by many pioneers during the space race of the mid-20th century.
One such figure was a squirrel monkey named Miss Baker. She was closer to Auburn than one might expect — she called it her last home.
NASA sent Miss Baker into orbit in 1959 with another squirrel monkey named Able. The animals were used to test the effects of space on a living creature, which were unknown at the time, as well as the effects of being shot into the atmosphere in a tube three years before Russia sent the first man into space.
The two survived, and from then on, Miss Baker took up residence at the United States Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Miss Baker was a hit among visitors, especially children, who wrote letters to her answered by Space and Rocket Center employee Rita Bell, coined “Secretary of the Monkeynauts,” according to a Huntsville Times article dated Oct. 26, 1981 by Deborah Roop.
“The amount of mail she got I think was around 1,100 letters a month,” said Charles Horton, a veterinarian who served as Miss Baker’s personal caretaker after the historic spaceflight. Horton graduated from Auburn in 1968 before becoming associated with the Space and Rocket Center and earned his degree in veterinary medicine after six years of study at the school.
After her return to Earth, Miss Baker was sent to a facility in Pensacola, Florida, where she stayed until 1970. From there, she was transferred to the Space and Rocket Center, and it was then that Horton’s involvement began with the monkey, as her health needed to be more closely monitored.
“The conditions they established when the Pensacola lab station agreed to let the museum have her were that a veterinarian was on call for her at all times, and that, should she die, they wanted to have a veterinarian have her prepared to do an autopsy,” Horton said.
Horton managed Hampton Cove Animal Hospital in the Huntsville area until 1999, according to the veterinary office’s website. Because of this background, he was chosen to be the doctor to oversee Miss Baker’s medical needs. He says he remembers her as a very temperamental animal.
“When they brought her up here [from Pensacola], they brought her and her husband Big George, and one of the Space Center employees was trying to catch him,” Horton said. “One of the first things Miss Baker did was jump on this guy and bite his back. We always handled her with big leather gloves because she wasn’t a pet at all. They told me at Auburn one of the last things she did was bite one of the students.”
At the Space and Rocket Center, Miss Baker was featured as a highlight of the museum during her life. She was given an exhibit with jungle-like conditions to mimic her birthplace in Iquitos, Peru.
“They always kept the humidity around 80 to 90% and the temperature around 80 degrees year round,” Horton said. “Even when we took her on trips to Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles, when we’d get checked in at the hotel, we’d turn the shower on with relatively hot water and put her in a cage in the bathroom so she wouldn’t dry out.”
The purpose of the 1959 experiment had been to determine if there was any potential radiation in space that could harm a living primate, Horton said, but scientists weren’t sure of any long-term effects after visiting space. Able had died just days after the flight following a medical procedure, but Miss Baker outlived her colleague by 25 years, earning her the record of longest-living squirrel monkey.
Her age led her to become a sort of local legend in Huntsville, and in 1979, mayor Joe Davis declared June 29 as “Monkeynaut Baker Day” with an official proclamation. In a document provided by Horton from his personal collection, he discussed the monkey’s 25th birthday and the attention it received from the media.
“Accustomed to dealing with local or regional press, I was surprised by an international call from the London Daily Times,” Horton said in the document. “The reporter asked if I felt Baker’s longevity was due to her space flight. My answer, ‘no,’ was accompanied by my standard reply that factors such as her controlled environment and indomitable spirit were probably key.”
As 1984 was coming to an end, however, so was Miss Baker’s long life. In late November of that year, she was diagnosed with kidney failure and needed urgent treatment. With its proximity to the center, she arrived at Auburn’s College of Veterinary Medicine — Horton’s alma mater.
“They brought her into my hospital and [after a blood test], I knew she was in kidney failure,” Horton said. “I knew we needed her to get the best possible care she could get, and I couldn’t have a 24-hour team taking care of her, but I knew they could do that at Auburn.”
Once Miss Baker arrived at the college, her condition seemed to be improving as reported by a press release from Ray Dillon, the director of its small animal clinic at the time.
But at 10:10 a.m. on November 29, she passed suddenly, per an Associated Press article from November 30.
Auburn veterinary students and faculty had given it their all, but her unusual age had taken its toll on her, far exceeding NASA’s estimate of 9 years in captivity and 13 in the wild, as Horton shared in a contemporary Birmingham Post-Herald article.
“When she died, they asked me to prepare her for burial,” Horton said. “I took a lock of her hair off the end her tail, which is the longest I could find, and I kept it for many years. I had an occasion to meet with Deborah Barnhart, director of the Space and Rocket Center, and I presented her with that lock of hair.”
Today, Miss Baker is honored with a tombstone at the entrance to the Space and Rocket Center. Because of her work in the field, Auburn now has a footnote in the history of space exploration.
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