![]() ![]() “This was the very first Mercury test with a live escape tower and it worked flawlessly,” reads one account of the day’s events written decades later. The capsule suffered so little damage it was reused in the next test launch. The spacecraft’s emergency systems kicked into gear, separating the robot-carrying capsule from the rocket booster, deploying its parachute and depositing it gently in the Atlantic Ocean a few miles away. That wasn’t the outcome NASA had hoped for, but it had a silver lining. So, 43 seconds into the mission, the range safety officer pulled the plug, giving the order to blow up the rocket. Instead, it was just going higher and higher, and if it came straight back down into the launch area, the outcome could be deadly. In MA-3, as the mission was known, the rocket was supposed to roll and pitch, then head out over the horizon. Inside the capsule at the top of the rocket sat a “robot astronaut,” an electronic mannequin that could inhale and exhale gas, heat and water vapor, simulating in key ways what an astronaut would experience.Īt 11:15 a.m ET, the spacecraft lifted off, engines blasting. On April 25, 1961, NASA launched Mercury-Atlas 3, one in a series of tests of the rocket that would carry the first American into space. The latest in an intermittent series looking back at groundbreaking, newsmaking, appalling and amusing events in government history. ![]()
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