Mercury-Redstone 1 (MR-1) was the first Mercury-Redstone uncrewed flight test in Project Mercury and the first attempt to launch a Mercury spacecraft with the Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle. Intended to be an uncrewed sub-orbital spaceflight, it was launched on November 21, 1960 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The launch failed in abnormal fashion: immediately after the Mercury-Redstone rocket started to move, it shut itself down and settled back on the pad, after which the capsule jettisoned its escape rocket and deployed its recovery parachutes. The failure has been referred to as the "four-inch flight", for the approximate distance traveled by the launch vehicle.
The Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle, designed for NASA's Project Mercury, was the first American manned space booster. It was used for six sub-orbital Mercury flights from 1960–61; culminating with the launch of the first, and 11 weeks later, the second American (and the second and third humans) in space. The four subsequent Mercury human spaceflights used the more powerful Atlas booster to enter low Earth orbit. A member of the Redstone rocket family, it was derived from the U.S. Army's Redstone ballistic missile and the first stage of the related Jupiter-C launch vehicle; but to human-rate it, the structure and systems were modified to improve safety and reliability.
Mercury No.2 is the Mercury capsule used for the Mercury-Redsone 1 mission which failed on launch.
Mercury DetailsIn July 1959, NASA chose the Redstone missile as the basis for the Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle to be used for suborbital test flights of the Project Mercury spacecraft. Three unmanned MRLV launch attempts were made between November 1960 and March 1961, two of which were successful. The MRLV successfully launched the chimpanzee Ham, and astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom on three suborbital flights in January, May and July 1961, respectively.
INFO WIKIA batch of 23 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.
2nd of the BlackSky Gen-3 high resolution Earth-imaging satellites.
A batch of 27 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.
NS-32 is the 12th crewed flight for the New Shepard program and the 32nd in its history.
Eighth of ten GPS III missions.
Chinese experimental satellite claimed to be for "Earth observation & environmental management" purposes, details not known.
Tianwen-2 is a planned Chinese asteroid sample return and comet orbiter mission due for launch in May 2025. The spacecraft will visit the Near Earth …
A batch of 27 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.
9th test flight of the two-stage Starship launch vehicle.
A batch of 24 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.