Mercury Atlas Agena Rocket 1/72 Scale Model Kit by Horizon Models

Mercury Atlas Agena Rocket 1/72 Scale Model Kit by Horizon Models:

Kit Stands about 18 inches tall.

The Atlas Agena can be built with one of two payloads can be displayed:  Agena Target Vehicle (ATV) or Augmented Target Docking Adaptor (ATDA)

Kit features new parts for the AGENA target vehicle, Agena Docking Target for crewed rendezvous and docking, separately molded pressure & fuel lines,  finely engraved recessed panel lines, display stand.   Decals include multiple missions.  Model can be modified to build the Augmented Target Docking Adapter (ADTA) - the Angry Alligator.  Approximately 16-17 inches tall when assembled.  32 parts and decals.   

Made in Australia.  Decals printed in USA by Microscale Industries

The Atlas-Agena was one of the most prolific US launchers in the 1960's. Based on the Convair SM-65D Atlas rocket, later redesignated SLV-3, it received an additional upper stage called the Agena. Typically launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL, or Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA, it launched Mariner probes to Venus and Mars, Ranger and Lunar Orbiter probes to the Moon, and later in its career, it launched many military payloads including the KH-7 reconnaissance satellite. But the Atlas-Agena is mostly remembered as the target vehicle for manned missions to low Earth orbit in the mid-1960s, as a testing grounds for rendezvous, docking and spacewalking, in preparations for the manned flights to the moon a few years later. 

This kit includes parts and decals to model the launch configuration of the Agena Target Vehicle (ATV) that was used on many crewed missions to practice rendezvous and docking. It can also model the Augmented Target Docking Adapter (ATDA), who's shroud failed to deploy correctly on its journey to orbit and was nicknamed the "Angry Alligator" by the astronauts that rendezvoused with it at an altitude more than 270 kilometers above the Earth's surface.