August 21, 1959 at 12:00 PM UTC
Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia, USA
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August 21, 1959 at 12:00 PM UTC
Status: Launch Failure · Live feed refreshes every 30 seconds
Launch Area 1
Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia, USA · 37.9386, -75.4572
Little Joe 1 (LJ-1) was a failed launch of a Little Joe by NASA, a solid fuel rocket that was designed for a Max Q abort and Launch Escape System test for Mercury capsule. The objective was to determine how well the escape rocket would function under the most severe dynamic loading conditions anticipated during a Mercury-Atlas launching.
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
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