Friday, July 17, 2009

50 YA: Juno II Failure

While the rest of the world takes note of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission (and a good remembrance it is), here at SpaceRubble we continue our dutiful coverage of events from 50 Years Ago. Sorry, I'm a day late on this one, which covers an event from July 16th, 1959.

NASA teamed with the Army/JPL to attempt to place another Explorer series satellite into orbit using a Juno II rocket as pictured above. However, the rocket began tipping over 5 seconds after lift-off and so it was detonated a half second later by the range safety officer. I'm sure that was a heart-breaking incident, one of many at this stage of NASA endeavors.

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