Never Forget the Space Monkeys That Made It All Possible

Although the stories are not well chronicled, and they aren’t all that well known, monkeys played a critical part in understanding human space flight. 

This story summarizes their contributions. I would like to note that among them, Bonnie is perhaps the most interesting one. And that’s because they wanted to study longer term effects in space, but Bonnie’s condition deteriorated rapidly and they had to abort the mission - and this was concurrent with the moon landing. Surely this was a concern among scientists. 

And second, the public reaction to using Bonnie in this situation caused nasa to re-think how they handle primates in experimentation. 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/five-important-ape-o-naut-moments/