REDSTONE: THE ROCKET FAMILY THAT CARRIED AMERICA TO SPACE

One rocket family launched America's first satellite and America's first astronaut. Before there was NASA, there was the Redstone.

FROM HUNTSVILLE TO THE CAPE

The Redstone was developed in the early 1950s by Wernher von Braun's team at the Army's Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama — a short-range ballistic missile that became the trunk of America's rocket family tree.

Its test flights were a fixture of the early Cape.

THE WORKHORSE FAMILY

Stretch a Redstone, add upper stages, and you get the Jupiter-C — the rocket that put Explorer 1, America's first satellite, into orbit in January 1958.

Few machines have been adapted so successfully for so many jobs.

CARRYING THE FIRST AMERICANS

Refined for human flight as the Mercury-Redstone, it launched Alan Shepard on America's first spaceflight in May 1961, and Gus Grissom two months later.

A missile built for war ended up opening the door to space — the defining irony of the early Space Age.

LEGACY AND IMPACT

The lessons of the Redstone flowed directly into the Jupiter, the Saturn family, and ultimately the Moon.

It's also the namesake of a certain trumpet-playing astronaut you may have seen around this site.

EVERY FAMILY TREE HAS A TRUNK. AMERICA'S ROCKET FAMILY GROWS FROM THE REDSTONE.