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| A Little Joe 2 ("Mr Sam") launch cover from "Goldcraft", postmarked at Wallops Island with a hand cancel on December 4, 1959. |
Little Joe 2 (LJ-2) launched from Wallops Island, Virginia, on December 4, 1959, carrying a Mercury boilerplate spacecraft with Sam, a rhesus monkey, aboard. The mission was an unmanned Project Mercury test flight specifically designed to investigate the behavior of the spacecraft and escape system during a high-altitude abort. Sam's name was actually an acronym for the School of Aerospace Medicine (SAM), which was involved in the biomedical research associated with the animal flights.
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| Photo: Mr SAM |
The mission was highly successful. About one minute after launch, the Mercury escape system fired and pulled the capsule away from the Little Joe booster at high speed. The spacecraft reached approximately 53 miles (85 km) altitude and a maximum velocity of about 4,466 mph, with Sam experiencing approximately 14.8 G. He experienced about 3 minutes 13 seconds of weightlessness during the suborbital flight.
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| Photo: SAM suited up for the spaceflight. |
After a flight lasting 11 minutes 6 seconds, the capsule splashed down in the Atlantic and was recovered by the USS Borie. Sam was found alive and in good condition.
