Apollo 7

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Mission emblem
Mission emblem Apollo 7
Mission dates
Mission: Apollo 7
COSPAR-ID : 1968-089A
Command module: CSM-101
Launcher: Saturn-1B , serial number SA-205
Crew: 3
Begin: October 11, 1968, 15:02:45  UTC
JD : 2440141.1269097
Starting place: Cape Canaveral AFS , LC-34
Landing: October 22, 1968, 11:11:48 UTC
JD : 2440151.9665278
Landing place: Caribbean
27 ° 38 ′  N , 64 ° 9 ′  W
Flight duration: 10d 20h 9min 3s
Earth orbits: 163
Recovery ship: USS Essex
Team photo
Apollo 7 - v. l. No. Donn Eisele, Walter Schirra, Walter Cunningham
Apollo 7 - v. l. No. Donn Eisele , Walter Schirra , Walter Cunningham
◄ Before / After ►
Apollo 6
(unmanned) 		Apollo 8
(manned)
Previous manned mission:
Apollo 1

Apollo 7 was the first manned spaceflight as part of the Apollo program after the Apollo 1 fire disaster .

Mission planning and crew

Early plans

When NASA's Apollo program became concrete in 1966 , it was still assumed that the first manned launch of the three-seater Apollo spacecraft would take place in late 1966 or early 1967 under the project name AS-204 . On March 21, 1966, it was announced to the public that Virgil Grissom , Edward White and Roger Chaffee had been selected as the crew. At this point in time there were four more Gemini flights outstanding .

A second manned flight was to take place with the astronauts Walter Schirra , Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham . However, this plan was canceled again in December because it would have brought little new knowledge. That is why the Schirra team was assigned as a substitute for the Grissom crew.

The substitute team moves up

Grissom, White and Chaffee were killed in the Apollo 1 disaster, so Schirra, Eisele and Cunningham should now be the first astronauts to fly the new Apollo spacecraft. Schirra was one of NASA's first astronauts and had made two extremely successful flights with the Mercury Atlas 8 and Gemini 6 . Even before the flight he announced that he would be leaving NASA after this mission. Eisele and Cunningham were both from the third group of astronauts and had no previous space experience.

This flight was named Mission C internally . The substitutes were Thomas Stafford , John Young and Eugene Cernan . Stafford and Young had each made two flights in the Gemini program, Cernan one.

The support crew

An innovation in the Apollo program was a support team, which was supposed to relieve the main and substitute teams of time-consuming tasks. Among other things, this included ensuring that flight plans and checklists were always up to date. They were also responsible for designing exercise programs for the simulators. Before countdown tests, the support crew made sure all switches were in the correct position before the main crew got on. Inexperienced astronauts were assigned to work in the support crew, who were then able to recommend themselves for a replacement team, which usually led to an appointment for the third flight. For Apollo 7, as the first manned flight was now called, Jack Swigert , Ron Evans and Bill Pogue were selected as the support crew. Pogue replaced Edward Givens , who was killed in an accident in June 1967. All four came from the fifth astronaut group, which was not appointed until April 4, 1966.

Swigert later joined the Apollo 13 backup team and was called up to the main team by Ken Mattingly shortly before the start due to a possible rubella infection . Evans was later a member of the Apollo 14 backup crew , while Pogue was nominated for Skylab 4 without having previously been a replacement.

preparation

Even before the Apollo 1 fire disaster, numerous changes to the Apollo command module had been planned. In particular, a second flight of the version named Block-I had already been canceled in December 1966. The spaceship with the serial number CSM-101 was used for Apollo 7, the fourth model from the significantly improved Block II series. In its capsule CM-101, a crew consisting of McDivitt, Scott and Schweickart had completed their first training at the manufacturer North American Aviation on January 26, 1967, one day before the Apollo 1 accident . Since no lunar module was to be carried during the flight of Apollo 7, the launch took place with a Saturn 1B rocket (serial number AS-205)

The various parts of the launcher were delivered to the Kennedy Space Center in the spring of 1968 and assembled over the summer. On August 9, 1968, Apollo 7 could be transported to launch complex 34.

The originally planned tests could have been carried out within three days, but NASA planned a longer flight of up to eleven days - longer than a flight to the moon and back would take.

Three goals were formulated for this flight:

  • Proof of the capabilities of the spaceship and crew
  • Proof of the efficiency of the crew, spaceship and operating systems during a manned space flight
  • Proof of the spaceship's rendezvous ability.

The substitute team Stafford, Cernan and Young as well as the support crew Swigert, Evans and Pogue served as liaison officers ( CapCom ) during the flight.

Flight history

The start in Cape Canaveral
Saturn S-IV-B stage
Rendezvous with the S-IVB level
Lake Chad on an Apollo 7 image

Apollo 7 took off from the LC-34 on Cape Canaveral on October 11, 1968 at 3:02 p.m. UTC and is the only manned mission ever to have started from this launch site. In relatively strong winds, the Saturn 1B rocket worked as planned. After about ten minutes, the spacecraft reached Earth orbit with 227 km perigee and 285 km apogee .

A few hours later, the spacecraft decoupled from the rocket's second stage ( S-IVB ), turned, and rendezvoused to simulate how future Apollo ships would pull the lunar module out of the third stage of a Saturn V.

The spaceship moved away from the second stage and again performed a rendezvous the next day in which other maneuvers were performed that simulated a rendezvous between the lunar module and the Apollo command module in orbit. Some of the navigation was done with radar, and some with a sextant . Tracing the path with the sextant was possible up to a distance of approx. 600 km. The S-IVB was even visible up to almost 1800 km.

For the first time, a television camera was on board an American spaceship. Although this had already been considered on previous flights, it was repeatedly canceled due to weight problems. Soviet spaceships had cameras on board several times, but Apollo 7 saw the first live broadcast from space.

During the course of the mission, the spaceship's engine was ignited eight times, with it running between half a second and twelve minutes. The flight path was increased to an altitude of 452 km. All path changes were successful.

Schirra had a runny nose on the first day and soon he had infected Cunningham and Eisele. Since a relatively extensive test program had to be carried out - after all, it was the first flight of a new type of spacecraft - there were differences between the crew and the flight control. Because nasal secretion does not run down by itself in weightlessness , the astronauts constantly had to blow their nose. Several days before landing, they insisted on re-entry without helmets and gloves, because they feared that the build-up of pressure would otherwise burst their eardrums . Here it was necessary to weigh the risks. The discussions lasted for several days; finally the flight control gave way.

The accident at Soyuz 11 four years later showed that there was a real risk of a pressure drop on reentry . A valve opened prematurely, and the three Soviet cosmonauts suffocated because the Soyuz spaceship was not designed to wear spacesuits .

After ten days, the astronauts fired the brake rockets for twelve seconds. Four minutes later, the service module was disconnected from the command module. Upon re-entry , the astronauts had to endure accelerations of up to 3.3 g . For the last six minutes, the fall was slowed down as planned by the parachutes . It took half an hour from the ignition of the brake rockets to the splash in the Caribbean . The Apollo landing capsule was initially with the tip down in the water, but could be erected by inflating the air sacs provided for this purpose. The astronauts were using a helicopter aboard the USS Essex brought.

Whereabouts of the spacecraft

In January 1969, the command capsule was presented on a NASA car on the occasion of the inauguration parade of President Richard M. Nixon . It was on loan, along with Schirra's spacesuit, to the National Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa , Ontario for the next thirty years . In November 2003, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC requested return for the capsule to be displayed in its new branch, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. It is currently on loan at the Frontiers of Flight Museum near Love Field in Dallas , Texas .

Significance for the Apollo program

The flight of Apollo 7 not only demonstrated the airworthiness of the spacecraft, but also the fitness of all other facilities such as rocket assembly, launch preparation and flight control. This was an important step on the way to the moon landing. There was now little more than two years left to the end of the decade to deliver on Kennedy's promise.

The next step was to have James McDivitt's team test the lunar module with Apollo 8 in earth orbit. However, months beforehand it had become clear that the ferry would not be ready anytime soon.

However, NASA had already developed an alternative plan internally: Frank Borman's team , which was to fly Apollo 9 next year , was ready. This flight could be brought forward and the Saturn V's first manned flight could be carried out this year. Even without a lander, you could make your way to the moon and gain valuable experience.

Three weeks after Apollo 7 landed, NASA finally decided to change the original plan and send Apollo 8 to the moon.

The tensions between the astronauts and the flight control in Houston led to a change in the procedures on the ground, in particular to a greater involvement of the astronauts in the mission planning. None of the three astronauts was nominated for another flight.

See also

Web links

Commons : Apollo 7  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Review: 50 years of Apollo 7 , DPA report on heise.de