Sargent - Space Rocket History Podcast

“The designers made the Little Joe booster assembly to approximate the same performance that the Army’s Redstone booster would have with the capsule payload. But in addition to being flexible enough to perform a variety of missions, Little Joe could be made for about one-fifth the basic cost of the Redstone, would have much lower operating costs, and could be developed and delivered with much less time and effort. And, unlike the larger launch vehicles, Little Joe could be shot from the existing facilities at Wallops Island.”

Little Joe 6 Launch

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Little Joe on the Mobile Launcher

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Sam the Monkey

Mounting the Capsule

Little Joe: Mercury’s First Steps from James Duffy on Vimeo.

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At approximately 12:48 a.m. EST, the first listening stations began reporting that they had received radio signals from the “Explorer” satellite. The first station to confirm the signals was the San Gabriel Valley Amateur Radio Club near Pasadena, California. However, ABMA officials were waiting for confirmation from the Goldstone radio tracking station in Earthquake Valley, California. Finally, 1 hour and 57 minutes after launch the confirmation was finally relayed to ABMA officials in the form of the simple phrase, “Goldstone has the bird!”