One of our nation's first astronauts, and later a beloved resident of Huntsville, Alabama, launched from Cape Canaveral on a historic space mission 65 years ago today.

On May 28, 1959, an 11-ounce squirrel monkey named Miss Baker flew aboard a Huntsville-built Jupiter C missile on a 16-minute suborbital flight, flying 360 miles into space and returning safely to Earth.

Her flying companion, a 7-pound rhesus monkey named Miss Able, also survived the trip but died four days later during surgery to remove electrodes that had monitored her vital signs during the flight.

The successful launch and recovery meant that two years later astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space.

Baker, who survived the nine-minute weightless flight, was featured on the cover of Life magazine in a full-page photo.

Baker and her husband, Big George, originally lived at the Naval Aerospace Medical Center in Florida, but in 1971 moved to what is now the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where they lived for the rest of their lives.

Each anniversary of the flight was celebrated at the museum, where Baker was treated to her favorite foods, including strawberry jelly, bananas and cottage cheese.

Countless adults today have fond childhood memories of seeing Miss Baker in the museum's spacious, space-age enclosure, and kids who wrote fan letters to her back then were soon rewarded with receiving “paw-printed” photographs in the mail.

Baker has appeared on 20 nationally syndicated television shows.

After Big George's death, Ms. Baker married her second husband, a man named Norman, in a formal ceremony officiated by District Judge Dan McCoy, a ceremony that was jokingly said to have been held because many felt it was inappropriate for two archbishops to lead “immoral lives” in a conservative Bible Belt state like Alabama.

The little space pioneer, who appeared on national television 20 times in his lifetime, died of kidney failure in 1984 at age 27, having already set a world record as the longest-lived living squirrel monkey, whose average lifespan is 15 to 20 years.

She was solemnly buried outside the entrance doors of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, and to this day visitors continue to place bananas at the monument marking her grave.

This story was originally The Art of Alabama PoliticsA media outlet dedicated to the wild, weird, and wonderful history of Alabama politics.