Fruit flies strapped into a captured V-2, forced into diamond hands at 109 kilometers — fourteen years before Gagarin. The capsule came down on a parachute. They survived.
Four phases, one afternoon in the desert. Scrub through the flight the same way the ground crew logged it.
3:52 AM. A sealed glass capsule of Drosophila melanogaster is fitted into the nose cone of a captured German V-2. No training, no simulator runs — this is the first attempt.
No live feed here — just what actually happened, straight from the mission record.
The fruit flies flew first. Everything that came after just had better PR.
Launched from White Sands aboard a captured V-2 to study cosmic radiation. First animals to leave Earth's atmosphere.
Survived
“The original early flyers. Zero hype. Actual launch.”