High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Mercury-Redstone 1 (MR-1) was the first Mercury-Redstone mission in the Mercury program and the first attempt to launch a Mercury spacecraft with the Mercury-Redstone launch vehicle. Intended to be an unmanned sub-orbital flight, it was launched on November 21, 1960 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch failed in a peculiar fashion which has been referred to as the "four-inch flight".