Mercury “Big Joe” Capsule (A19680244000), in Space Hanger at Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA, April 16, 2019. (Smithsonian Photo by Mark Avino) On September 9, 1959, NASA launched this unoccupied Mercury spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a suborbital flight that lasted 13 minutes. Its launch was the second in the Mercury program and the first using an Atlas booster. The flight helped NASA evaluate the booster, the new ablative heat shield, the capsule’s flight dynamics and aerodynamic shape, and spacecraft recovery systems and procedures.

I’ve been fascinated by space stuff as long as I can remember. I remember doing a project (complete with filmstrip that I made myself, no joke) on the Space Shuttle in the early ’80s. I love astronomy (both in the stargazing way and in the hard physics way), I love all of the launches and landings, I love the ISS, I love the technology that gets invented because of the space program, I love watching satellites fly over, and everything else.

That is all.

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