Mercury-Jupiter 2 (MJ-2)

Planned manned Mercury long-range suborbital flights using the Jupiter IRBM as a booster. These were considered as an intermediary step in the Mercury program before use of the Jupiter booster in the program was cancelled in July 1959 on cost grounds.

In the January 1959 Mercury program plan, flights of the capsule on a Jupiter IRBM were to take place in addition to flights atop the Redstone and Atlas boosters. The second Mercury-Jupiter flight was planned as a maximum dynamic pressure test to qualify a production Mercury capsule with a chimpanzee aboard. A human astronaut was considered briefly before the Mercury-Jupiter flights were cancelled in July 1959 on cost grounds. Mercury-Jupiter 2 was slated to fly in 1960. In the event the Mercury-Redstone flights were a year behind schedule and NASA moved on to the Mercury-Atlas flights in July 1961.