recovery crews once again failed to locate the capsule after splashdown, but telemetry data confirmed the mouse's survival from liftoff through reentry and proved comprehensively that living organisms could survive space travel. Attention now turned to Thor-Able 127 and Pioneer 0, the world's first lunar probe. This flight took place on 17 August, but ended embarrassingly when the Thor exploded 77 seconds into the launch due to another turbopump malfunction. After an Atlas missile test a month later also failed due to the turbopumps, the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division quickly replaced the pumps in all of their missiles and this problem did not repeat itself again. On 10 October, Pioneer 1 was launched on Thor 130. The second stage shut down too early and the probe did not have sufficient velocity to escape Earth's gravity. It re-entered the atmosphere and burned up 43 hours after launch. Pioneer 2 was launched on 8 November and reentered the atmosphere less than an hour after launch when the third stage failed to ignite. The next six Thor-Able flights were suborbital tests for the Air Force (23 January, 28 February, 21 March, 8 April, 20 May, and 11 June 1959). All of these were successful except the first one, which failed to stage due to an electrical problem and fell into the Atlantic Ocean. On 7 August, Explorer 6 (a scientific satellite) was launched on Vehicle 134 and successfully orbited. On 17 September, Transit 1A failed to orbit due to the third stage again failing to ignite. On 3 November, Pioneer 5 was successfully launched. Intended originally as a Venus probe, technical delays caused it to be launched after the 1959 Venus window had closed so that it was instead sent into a heliocentric orbit. The final Thor-Able launch orbited Tiros-1 on 1 April 1960. The Able upper stage name represents its place as the first in the series, from the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet. See also List of Thor and Delta launches (includes Thor-Able) Thor (rocket family) References External links Space Technology Laboratories Documents Archive Thor (rocket family)