Big Joe was a subprogram of Project Mercury. It comprised a single flight using the Atlas launch vehicle, and a boilerplate Mercury capsule. The purpose of the Big Joe Program was to prove the ablative heatshield which would be used for Mercury orbital missions. Download high resolution version (640x1093, 91 KB) Big Joe Atlas - Mercury spacecraft test Sept 1958 From NASA NIX website: http://nix. ... Project Mercury was the United States first successful manned spaceflight program. ... Atlas missile launch from Cape Canaveral in 1957 The Atlas is a venerable line of space launch vehicles originally built by the Convair Division of General Dynamics, and now Lockheed Martin. ...
Mission Numbering
The official Mercury mission numbering designation was a two letter designation which corresponded to the launch vehicle type, followed by a dash then a 1 or two character designation of the flight/test number. So the official designation for the only Big Joe flight was BJ-1. Big Joe ( Atlas 10-D) launched an unmanned boilerplate Mercury capsule from Cape Canaveral, FL. on September 9, 1959. ...
Atlas Launch Vehicle Numbering
The launch vehicle used for BJ-1 ("628/10-D") has a slightly different numbering scheme than those used for the later Mercury-Atlas flights.
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