Mercury-Redstone 1, or “MR-1,” the first mission to mate the Mercury capsule to the Redstone rocket, failed on the launchpad. MR-2, with Ham the chimpanzee as its passenger, overshot the landing spot by sixty miles and was nearly underwater when it was finally plucked from the ocean. Pulling back the curtain on three and a half years of work, NASA took the audacious step of deciding to broadcast the launch of Project Mercury’s first manned mission—“Mercury-Redstone 3,” carrying astronaut Alan Shepard—live.
