Before Neil Armstrong there was Albert. In 1948 the United States made its first attempt to launch a monkey into space. The mission to space was a failure, as the German V2 rocket carrying Albert only reached an altitude of 39 miles. And sadly the brave little Rhesus monkey died after his craft crashed. But the U.S. space program did learn many things from Albert's voyage, which helped his successor "Albert II" to be the first monkey to successfully go into space.
