NASA’s Little Joe II booster was designed and built by General Dynamics as a testbed for Apollo program hardware from 1963 to 1966. The 26-meter silver rocket was launched on a total of five missions and suffered just one failure, a failure that would ironically be its greatest success.
The test was launched on May 19, 1965. Minutes into the flight, the rocket began to spin uncontrollably ripping itself apart. Luckily, the escape system that was being testing worked perfectly and pulled the uncrewed boilerplate spacecraft clear of the wreckage.
Video credit: NASA/USAF
