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mLittle Joe RocketTest Series OpenedWALLOPS ISLAND, Va. (UPI)—The federal space agency Sunday successfully launched a Little Joe booster rocket bearing an Incomplete model of the capsule that will carry the first American into space.The vehicle was deliberately destroyed by signal from the ground 2 Vi minutes after the launching. At that time it was at an altitude of about 40 miles over the Atlantic,the National Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration said.Sunday’s firing* was the first of a series of planned tests for the Little »Toe, which was developed to test Project Mercury man-in-spaee hardware.The firing was not only an operational test of the rocket’s launching system, but also of the system for destroying it in flight should it go astray. Sunday’s Little Joe did not veer off course, but the .system for destroying it was tried out intentionally.* * *ON TOP OF the rocket was a boilerplate steel model of the. same weight and configuration of the capsule that the first American spaceman will ride, plus an inert escape rocket system.Neither the capsule nor the escape system was instrumented, NASA said.NASA plans in the next several months to launch heavily instrumented Mercury capsule mockups to test the capsule-designed concepts as well as the escape system and the system for recovering the man-carrying capsules from space flight.Some monkeys and one chim-panze in a real Mercury capsule will be sent aloft eventually.The Little Joe stands 55 feet high, weighs about 20 tons and has a takeoff thrust of about 250,000 pounds.♦n.. i •__- ni
Newspaper Details
Pacific Stars and Stripes
Tokyo, Tôkyô, JP
Tue, Oct 06, 1959
Page 21
Full Page
Clipped by
Marc H.
VA, USA 06 Oct 2024
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