Origins and Early History
The first type of space launch mission Thor was asked to perform was testing of the warhead reentry vehicle for the Atlas missile. For these three tests a Thor core stage was topped by a second stage named Able using the Aerojet AJ-10-40 engine from the Vanguard second stage. The first such launch, 116, was lost April 23, 1958 due to a turbopump failure in the main engine. The recovery of the reentry vehicles on the succeeding two attempts were not successful. Three mice, one on each vehicle, died in these tests.
The Able stage from the Atlas reentry vehicle tests was upgraded (to become the Able I) with a third stage consisting of an unguided Altair X-248 solid rocket motor. A Thor Able I was used in an attempt to place the 84 lb (38 kg) Pioneer 0 spacecraft into lunar orbit where it would take pictures of the lunar surface with a TV camera. The mission ended prematurely at 73.6 seconds after launch on August 17, 1958, due to a turbopump failure.
On August 7, 1959 a Thor-Able was used to successfully launch Explorer 6, the first satellite to transmit pictures of Earth taken from orbit.
Read more about this topic: Thor (rocket Family)
Famous quotes containing the words origins and, origins, early and/or history:
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It’s all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)