Big Joe 1
Big Joe 1 launch preparations

Big Joe was a subprogram of America's Project Mercury

Project Mercury

In January 1960 NASA awarded Western Electric Company a contract for the Mercury tracking network. The value of the contract was over $33 million. Also in January, McDonnell delivered the first production-type Mercury spacecraft, less than a year after award of the formal contract. On February 12,...

 space program. It comprised a single flight using an Atlas launch vehicle

Atlas LV-3B

The Atlas LV-3B, Atlas D Mercury Launch Vehicle or Mercury-Atlas Launch Vehicle, was a man-rated expendable launch system used as part of the United States Project Mercury to send astronauts into low Earth orbit. It was derived from the SM-65D Atlas missile, and was a member of the Atlas family of...

, and a boilerplate Mercury capsule. The purpose of the Big Joe program was to prove the ablative heat shield

Heat shield

A heat shield is designed to shield a substance from absorbing excessive heat from an outside source by either dissipating, reflecting or simply absorbing the heat...

 which would be needed for the re-entry of orbital Mercury missions. The flight, Big Joe 1

Big Joe 1

Big Joe 1 launched an unmanned boilerplate Mercury capsule from Cape Canaveral, Florida on September 9, 1959. The objective of the Big Joe program was to test the Mercury spacecraft ablating heat shield...

, occurred on September 9, 1959.

Mission numbering

The official Mercury mission numbering designation was a two-letter designation which corresponded to the launch vehicle type, followed by a dash then a one- or two-character designation of the flight/test number. The official designation for Big Joe 1 was BJ-1.

Atlas launch vehicle numbering

The launch vehicle used for BJ-1 (628/10-D) had a slightly different numbering scheme than those used for the later Mercury-Atlas

Mercury-Atlas

Mercury-Atlas was a subprogram of Project Mercury which comprised most of the flights and tests using the Atlas LV-3B launch vehicle. The Atlas was also used for one Mercury flight under the Big Joe subprogram.- Mission numbering :...

flights.