TEAMQUEST '96 SPACEFLIGHT HOMEPAGE
The United States' Manned venture into space began with Project Mercury. We have included a few flights that are actually considered Pre-Mercury, we feel these Primate flights were worth mentioning. You will find that no other site lists these flights. We do not want you to misunderstand our message by including them. We do not feel that man and monkeys or chimps are related or dirivitives. We simply feel that these missions were important steps in placing man in space, and on the moon. NASA learned a great deal from the primate flights and did not risk human life testing the conditions that would be encountered in spaceflight.
Well, actually the first U.S. Astronaut was not a human, but rather was a chimp. It is true, the first Astronaut was a chimpanzee named "Sam". Sam was launched into space aboard a Big Joe II rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida on the morning of 12/04/1959. The total flight lasted a duration of 3 hours 21 minutes and sustained an orbit of 147.4 apogee by 99.5 perigee statute miles. The space capsule was fished out of the Atlantic Ocean by the recovery vessel. Sam seemed no worse for the wear and was taken back to Canaveral, where he was tested and tested. The lab work turned up no changes in Sam and the mission was deemed a success. Many primate flights took place prior to Mercury III. Soon NASA would put a man in Space.
The Russians actually placed a man in space before the U.S. did. For more info on the first man in space, Cosmonaut YURI GAGARIN of the Soviet Union actually was successfully launched into space almost one month before Shepard's flight. This was one leg of the
The first US Astronaut soars upward.
The Mercury Project suffered a few minor set-backs, but was soon back on track. Three weeks after Gagarin circled the entire earth, Alan Shepard rode the Freedom VII capsule atop of a Redstone rocket a distance of some 350 miles and achieved an altitude of 115 miles. The Freedom VII Capsule had no window and Shepard could only see outside through a periscope. The view was in black and white because Sheppard had left a grey filter over the opening. The U.S. was indeed behind the Russians in the SPACE RACE, but we were making a quick comeback. Shepard's flight was indeed a "small step" in our "giant leap" into space, but it was the first. The
GEMINI PROJECT starting up. Soon we would be putting men into space.
| MERCURY MISSIONS | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MISSION AND DATE | CREW | DURATION | OBJECTIVES | ACCOMP- PLISHMENTS |
| Big Joe I 9/9/1959 |
unmanned | 13mins | test heat shield and capsule |
launch vehicle failed |
| Little Joe VI 10/4/1959 |
unmanned | 5mins/10secs | test capsule integrity and aerodynamics |
partially successful |
| Little Joe I-A 11/4/1959 |
unmanned | 8mins/11secs | Q bort and escape test |
partially successful |
| Little Joe II 12/4/1959 |
Sam (a monkey) |
11mins/6secs | Primate escape at high altitude |
successful |
| Little Joe I-B 1/21/1960 |
Miss Sam (a monkey) |
8mins/35secs | Q bort and escape test |
successful |
| Beach-Abort VII 4/6/1960 |
unmanned | 1min/16secs | test off-pad escape system |
successful |
| Mercury-Atlas I 7/20/1960 |
unmanned | not listed | test capsule & rocket combo. |
failure |
| Little Joe V 11/8/1960 |
unmanned | 2mins/22secs | Qualify MAC spacecraft | failure |
| Merc.-Redstone I 11/20/1960 |
unmanned | 2secs | test capsule & rocket combo |
failure |
| Merc.-Redstone I-A 12/19/1960 |
unmanned | 15mins/45secs | check systems for sub-orbital oper. |
successful |
| Merc.-Redstone II 1/31/1961 |
Ham (a chimp) |
16mins/39secs | Primate sub-orbital and auto abort |
capsule successful |
| Mercury-Atlas II 2/21/1961 |
unmanned | 17mins/56secs | test capsule & rocket combo |
successful |
| Little Joe V-A 3/18/1961 |
unmanned | 23mins/48secs | impact test | partially successful |
| Mercury Booster 3/24/1961 |
unmanned | 8mins/23secs | booster test | successful |
| Mercury-Atlas III 4/25/1961 |
robot control | 40secs | Quick test | failure- capsule recovered |
| Little Joe V-B 4/28/61 |
unmanned | 5mins/25secs | test escape sequence | partially successful |
| Merc. III Freedom VII 5/05/61 |
Neil Armstrong | 15mins/28secs | 1st US Manned Space Flight |
mission successful |
| Merc. IV 07/21/61 |
Gus Grissom | 15 Mins 37 secs | 2nd US Manned Space Flight | mission successful |
| Mercury-Atlas IV 9/13/1961 |
robot control | 1hr/49mins/20secs | capsule enviromental control | partially successful |
| Mercury-Scout I 11/1/1961 |
unmanned | 43secs | test capsule & rocket combo | failure |
| Mercury-Atlas V 11/29/1961 |
Enos (a chimp) |
3hrs/20mins/59secs | test capsule enviroment | partially successful |
| Mercury-Atlas VI 02/20/1962 |
John Glenn, 1st Amer. orbit |
4 hrs, 55 mins, 23 secs | 1st American to orbit | mission successful |
| Mercury-Atlas VII 05/24/1962 |
Scott Carpenter | 4 hrs, 56 mins, 5 secs | long range flight test | mission successful |
| Mercury-Atlas VIII 10/03/1962 |
Wally Schirra | 9 hrs, 13 mins, 11 secs | pinpoint landing test | mission successful |
| Mercury-Atlas IX 05/15/1963 | Gordon Cooper | 1 day, 10 hrs,19 mins | final Merc. mission | mission successful |
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Last Updated by TeamQuest '96 c/o hotshots@ix.netcom.com on August 15th 1996 at 20:59:59 PDT