Mercury Redstone - Freedom 7 Lauch Vehicle

NW047 1/144 Mercury Redstone - Freedom 7 LV
Construction kit of Mercury Atlas LV. Decals for Alan Shepard's first manned Mercury mission are included.
17 parts (12 resin + 5 PE) + 13 decals

In July 1951, Von Braun and his team began to build a large guided missile - Redstone. To power this missile, North American Aviation scaled up a V-2 engine, that burned a liquid oxygen-alcohol fuel. During the powered portion of flight, control of the missile came from carbon vanes located in the engine exhaust and after that from air rudders on the tip of each fin. It was determined that the range and accuracy could be increased if the warhead separated from the booster after engine burnout. The warhead section had four air vanes to control the final trajectory to target after separation.
The Redstone may be best known for its role in the Mercury program. 6 Redstone launches from November 1960 to July 1961 carried Mercury capsule on suborbital flights. The last two of these carried Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom, the first two Americans in space.
Mercury-Redstone 3 was the first US manned spaceflight. At 9:34 AM, on May 5, 1961, booster MR-7 liffted off from Cape Canaveral with Alan Shepard riding Mercury spacecraft no. 7, nicknamed Freedom 7. The spacecraft reached peak altitude of 116 miles (186 km). At 9:49, Freedom 7 splashed into the Atlantic Ocean, 487 miles (780 km) from the Cape.