Previous Spaceflight Launches
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Juno II | Explorer 11
Army Ballistic Missile Agency | United States of AmericaCape Canaveral, FL, USA
April 27, 1961, 2:16 p.m.
Atlas LV-3B | Mercury-Atlas 3
National Aeronautics and Space Administration | United States of AmericaCape Canaveral, FL, USA
April 25, 1961, 4:15 p.m.
Status: Launch Failure
Mission:
Uncrewed test flight of the Mercury program. The launch proceeded normally until about T+20 seconds when the pitch and roll sequence failed to initiate and the vehicle instead just continued flying straight upward, requiring early termination of the flight.
Suborbital
Trailblazer 1 | Trailblazer 1g
National Aeronautics and Space Administration | United States of AmericaWallops Island, Virginia, USA
April 21, 1961, 5:56 a.m.
Status: Launch Successful
Mission:
An experiment where an actual 'artificial meteorite' was flown. This was a 5.8 g steel pellet, which was driven into the atmosphere at 6 km/sec by a 'seventh stage', a shaped charge that accelerated the pellet after burnout of the rocket's six stage. This experiment provided a known reference by which the size of actual meteoroids could be measured according to the luminance of their trails.
Suborbital
Vostok-K | Vostok 1
Soviet Space Program | RussiaBaikonur Cosmodrome, Republic of Kazakhstan
April 12, 1961, 6:07 a.m.
Status: Launch Successful
Mission:
The first crewed space launch & the first orbital launch. It carried the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin who completed 1 orbit before safely re-entering the atmosphere, he ejected from his capsule at an altitude of 7 km in order to parachute safely to the ground. The mission lasted 108 minutes.
Low Earth Orbit
Thor DM-21 Agena-B | KH-5 2
United States Air Force | United States of AmericaVandenberg SFB, CA, USA
April 8, 1961, 7:21 p.m.
Thor DM-21 Agena-B | Discoverer 22
United States Air Force | United States of AmericaVandenberg SFB, CA, USA
March 30, 1961, 8:34 p.m.
Delta DM-19 | Explorer 10
United States Air Force | United States of AmericaCape Canaveral, FL, USA
March 25, 1961, 3:17 p.m.
Vostok-K | Sputnik 10
Soviet Space Program | RussiaBaikonur Cosmodrome, Republic of Kazakhstan
March 25, 1961, 5:54 a.m.
Redstone MRLV | Mercury-Redstone BD
Chrysler | United States of AmericaCape Canaveral, FL, USA
March 24, 1961, 5:30 p.m.
Status: Launch Successful
Mission:
Mercury-Redstone BD was an uncrewed booster development flight in the U.S. Mercury program. It was launched on March 24, 1961 from Launch Complex 5 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The mission used a boilerplate Mercury spacecraft and Redstone MRLV-5.
Suborbital
Little Joe | LJ-5A
North American Aviation | United States of AmericaWallops Island, Virginia, USA
March 18, 1961, 4:49 p.m.
