Mercury Redstone 1

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Mission dates
Mission: Mercury Redstone 1 (MR-1)
COSPAR-ID : MERCR1
Spacecraft: Serial number 2
Launcher: Redstone Mercury
Begin: November 21, 1960, 14:00 UTC
Starting place: LC-5 , Cape Canaveral
Landing: November 21, 1960, 14:00 UTC
Flight duration: 2s
Earth orbits: suborbital flight
Apogee : 10 centimeters
Maximum acceleration: 1 g
◄ Before / After ►
Mercury-Little-Joe 5 Mercury Redstone 1A
Final assembly of the Mercury Redstone 1

With Mercury-Redstone 1 (MR-1) was on 21 November 1960, the first test flight as part of the Mercury program with a fully assembled Redstone - rocket and a Mercury spacecraft take place.

Start attempt

The rocket was fully assembled on the launch pad and the countdown was normal until the main engines started. The engine fired, but it immediately failed again because a cable had not separated correctly from the rocket. The rocket had risen about 10 cm (4  inches ) from the ground and fell back into the support structure. The rescue tower then started, just because that was the next step in the planned program of the flight. Three seconds later, first the smaller release parachute and then the main parachute flew out of the top of the Mercury landing capsule , which then hung from the rocket.

Analyzes

"All we did was launch the rescue tower." later said a NASA official, very disappointed.

Despite this failure, the rescue system proved to be successful and valuable results could be gained from this breakdown.

The replacement mission, Mercury-Redstone 1A (MR-1A), ran smoothly on December 19, 1960 using the same space capsule (s / n 2) . The spacecraft reached an altitude of about 210 km (131  miles ) and was recovered from the Atlantic by a helicopter 15 minutes later after landing .

Web links

Commons : Mercury-Redstone 1  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files