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 WIKIOfficially described as an optical remote-sensing satellite built by SAST.
4 X-band synthetic-aperture radar Earth observation satellites for PIESAT (1 main, 3 sub-satellites), operating in tandem using very long baseline in…
A batch of 56 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.
Note: Payload identity uncertain. Russian reconnaissance satellite of unknown purposes, possibly in the same series as Kosmos 2551, 2555 and 2560.
Ofek is a series of Israeli reconnaissance satellites. Ofek-13 is an Israeli SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) reconnaissance satellite that combines hi…
A batch of 36 satellites for the OneWeb satellite constellation, which is intended to provide global Internet broadband service for individual consum…
A batch of 56 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.
Payload consists of 2 second generation Earth-imaging satellites for BlackSky. They are part of a constellation of 60 Low Earth Orbit Earth imagin…
Note: Payload identity uncertain. Bars-M is the second incarnation of the Bars project, which was started in the mid 1990ies to develop a success…
Maiden launch of the Terran 1 rocket developed by Relativity Space.