November 4, 1959 at 2:30 PM UTC
Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia, USA
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November 4, 1959 at 2:30 PM UTC
Status: Launch was a Partial Failure · Live feed refreshes every 30 seconds
Launch Area 1
Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia, USA · 37.9386, -75.4572
Little Joe 1A (LJ-1A) was an unmanned rocket launched as part of NASA's Mercury program on November 4, 1959. This flight, a repeat of the Little Joe 1 (LJ-1) launch, was to test a launch abort under high aerodynamic load conditions. Due to a delayed in the escape motor startup, the abort maneuver was not accomplished at the desired dynamic pressure, requiring a repeat of the test.
Little Joe
Height
17 m
Diameter
—
LEO capacity
0 kg
Successful launches
3
Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia, USA
Wallops Flight Facility is a rocket launch site on Wallops Island on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, United States, just east of the Delmarva Peninsula and north-northeast of Norfolk. The facility is operated by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and primarily serves to support science and exploration missions for NASA and other federal agencies. WFF includes an extensively instrumented range to support launches of more than a dozen types of sounding rockets; small expendable suborbital and orbital rockets; high-altitude balloon flights carrying scientific instruments for atmospheric and astronomical research; and, using its Research Airport, flight tests of aeronautical research aircraft, including uncrewed aerial vehicles.
Open mapConnected program records
Same launch vehicle
April 28, 1961 at 2:03 PM UTC
March 18, 1961 at 4:49 PM UTC
November 8, 1960 at 3:18 PM UTC
January 21, 1960 at 2:23 PM UTC
December 4, 1959 at 4:20 PM UTC