[Mercury Atlas 5] Path to orbit: launch of the Atlas rocket carrying...

[Mercury Atlas 5] Path to orbit: launch of the Atlas rocket carrying the chimpanzee Enos on a successful orbital flight. NASA, 29 November 1961. Printed 1961. Vintage gelatin silver print on fiber-based paper. 20.3×25.4 cm (8×10 in), with NASA caption numbered “LOD 61–9730” on the verso (NASA Cape Canaveral, Florida).

After the successful unmanned orbital flight of Mercury Atlas 4, to be on the safe side and test out a few more design changes, NASA still planned for one more unmanned test, Mercury Atlas 5 with a chimpanzee on board, before committing the Mercury-Atlas combo to a manned flight. The spacecraft and Enos survived the mission in good condition, qualifying the Mercury spacecraft to carry a human into orbit.

[NASA caption for a variant of this photograph] NASA Project Mercury primate-carrying spacecraft was launched today at 10:07a.m. EST from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in a test designed to qualify the Mercury spacecraft and all its systems which must function during orbit and reentry from orbit. If all goes according to plan, the animal-carrying spacecraft should land approximately 1,000 miles southeast of Cape Canaveral after a three-orbit flight. An Atlas launch vehicle, built by General Dynamics / Astronautics, was used to launch the craft. The spacecraft, manufactured by McDonnell Aircraft Corporation of St. Louis, Mo., is similar to those which carried astronauts Alan Shepard and Virgil “Gus” Grissom on ballistic flights and which recently successfully flew a single-orbit flight. Project Mercury is the initial step in the United States’ manned space exploration program.

Condition Report:Excellent condition.

Category:Photos ▸ Vintage photographs