On May 5, 1961, about 45 million US television viewers watched as a single-stage Redstone rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral. Mercury Redstone 3 carried Alan Shepard on a 15-minute flight to ...

In the early days of space exploration, scientists sent animals like fruit flies, monkeys, dogs, tortoises and worms into ...

Ham the Astrochimp blasted off on top of a Mercury-Redstone rocket — a rig that amounted to a chair strapped to an eight-story-tall ballistic missile — and punched a hole through the atmosphere.

On March 24, 1961, NASA's Mercury Redstone rocket launched on its last uncrewed flight before it started sending astronauts into space. The mission was known as the Mercury Redstone Booster ...

NASA modified the Army's Redstone medium-range ballistic missile to develop the Mercury-Redstone. It launched America's first astronaut in space on May 5, 1961. Alan Shepard, Jr., and the Freedom 7 ...

From a Cape Canaveral blockhouse the seven Mercury astronauts watched tensely last week as the countdown neared zero. Atop a towering Redstone rocket rested the one-ton Mercury space capsule of the ...

Its Mercury-Redstone rocket powered by liquid oxygen and alcohol carried the first American astronaut, Alan Shepard, into space May 5, 1961.

Chimpanzee Ham, who was the first chimp launched into space, gets a handshake welcome from a recovery ship commander after his flight on the Mercury Redstone rocket in 1961.

For the record, Shepard’s Mercury-Redstone 3 mission rocket also was automated, which was a bone of contention for the Mercury astronauts, according to Tom Wolfe’s classic book, ...