Saturn I SA-1
| Mission type | Test flight |
|---|---|
| Operator | NASA |
| Mission duration | 15 minutes |
| Distance travelled | 331.5 kilometers (206.0 mi) |
| Apogee | 136.2 kilometers (84.6 mi) |
| Spacecraft properties | |
| Launch mass | 52,480 kilograms (115,700 lb) |
| Start of mission | |
| Launch date | October 27, 1961, 15:06:04 UTC |
| Rocket | Saturn I SA-1 |
| Launch site | Cape Canaveral LC-34 |
| End of mission | |
| Decay date | October 27, 1961, 15:21:04 UTC |
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Project Apollo
Unmanned tests |
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SA-1 was the first flight of the Saturn I space launch vehicle, the first in the Saturn family, and first mission of the American Apollo program. The rocket was launched on October 27, 1961 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The Saturn I booster was a huge increase in size and power over anything previously launched. It was three times taller, required six times more fuel and produced ten times more thrust than the Jupiter-C rocket that had launched the first American satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit in 1958.
At the time, NASA had decided to not use all-up testing, when an entire system is tested at once. The agency planned to test each rocket stage in separate launches, so for SA-1 the only live stage was the S-I first stage.
This first flight was designed to test the structure of the launch vehicle during a suborbital flight using the nose cone from a Jupiter rocket.
As this was the first Saturn flight, the systems were still being developed. It was the first time that a stage had been delivered to Cape Canaveral by barge and it demonstrated this could be done for the larger stages of future Saturn rockets. The first stage and the two dummy upper stages arrived on August 15, 1961 on the barge Compromise. It had encountered some problems on the voyage, running aground four times due to poor nautical charts. On the return trip, the barge hit a bridge, causing some minor damage.
The booster was erected at Pad 34 five days later with little trouble. Testing proceeded, albeit a little behind schedule. At this time, testing was not automated and amounted to flicking switches in the control center and observing how the rocket responded.
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