Mercury-Atlas 1

Mercury-July 29, 1960 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Mercury spacecraft was unmanned and carried no launch escape system. The mission was to do a suborbital test flight and reentry of the spacecraft. The capsule had live posigrade separation rockets, but dummy retro rockets. The Atlas rocket suffered a structural failure 58 seconds after launch. The vehicle at that time was at approximately an altitude of 30,000 feet (9.1 km) and 11,000 feet (3.4 km) down range. The rocket suffered a failure near where the spacecraft adapter attaches to the Atlas. The rocket and capsule impacted the Atlantic Ocean, broke up and sank. The capsule and portions of the rocket were recovered from the ocean bottom and reconstructed for study.