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There are stories in the early Space Race that sit in the shadows, waiting for someone to stop and look at them with a little patience. This is one of those stories. Before John Glenn became a national hero, before America finally proved it could put a human being into orbit, a small and serious chimpanzee named Enos stepped into a cramped Mercury capsule and took the gamble first. His flight on November 29, 1961 was supposed to be a clean rehearsal for the big human moment. Instead it turned into a hard lesson about the limits of early technology and the grit of a living passenger who never understood the stakes but carried them anyway.

Today we walk back through that mission and give Enos his rightful place in the long and complicated road that led the United States into orbit.