Mercury Atlas 7
| Mission emblem | |||
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| Mission dates | |||
| Mission: | Mercury Atlas 7 (MA-7) | ||
| COSPAR-ID : | 1962-019A | ||
| Spacecraft: | Aurora 7 serial number 18 |
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| Launcher: | Atlas D 107-D | ||
| Crew: | 1 | ||
| Begin: | May 24, 1962, 12:45:16 UTC | ||
| Starting place: | LC-14 , Cape Canaveral | ||
| Landing: | May 24, 1962, 17:41:13 UTC | ||
| Landing place: |
Atlantic 19 ° 29 ′ N , 64 ° 5 ′ W |
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| Flight duration: | 4h 55min 57s | ||
| Earth orbits: | 3 | ||
| Recovery ship: | USS Intrepid | ||
| Orbit inclination : | 32.5 ° | ||
| Apogee : | 260 km | ||
| Perigee : | 154 km | ||
| Covered track: | 122,344 km | ||
| Maximum speed: | 28,242 km / h | ||
| Maximum acceleration: | 7.8 g | ||
| Team photo | |||
 Scott Carpenter |
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| ◄ Before / After ► | |||
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The Mercury-Atlas 7 ( MA-7 ) mission was a manned space flight as part of the US Mercury program .
crew
On November 29, 1961, after the successful flight of Mercury-Atlas 5 with a chimpanzee on board, NASA announced the crews for Mercury-Atlas 6 and 7. Deke Slayton was to become the pilot for Mercury-Atlas 7 . Walter Schirra was assigned as a substitute pilot .
Long before that, Slayton had been diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmias , but these did not prevent him from training as an astronaut. On March 15, 1962, however, the public was informed that Slayton could not take this flight due to a heart problem. However, he was not replaced by the reserve pilot Schirra, but by Scott Carpenter , who had already been a substitute for the Mercury-Atlas 6 flight (which was relatively similar in terms of the mission profile) and therefore appeared to be more suitable.
preparation
The spaceship (serial number 18) was delivered to Cape Canaveral on November 15, 1961 . Slayton named it Delta 7 , and when Carpenter took command, it was renamed Aurora 7 . The Atlas missile arrived on March 8, 1962. The start originally planned for the second week of April had to be postponed several times.
In principle, the same flight course was planned for Mercury-Atlas 7 as for Mercury-Atlas 6: three orbits of the earth with splashing in the Caribbean, but more experiments should be carried out.
Flight history
Mercury-Atlas 7 was launched on May 24, 1962 at 7:45 a.m. local time and reached orbit five minutes later. Carpenter conducted several experiments during his three orbits of the earth. Among other things, he was supposed to observe flares that were fired in Australia, but this was not possible due to the cloudiness.
An undiscovered malfunction in the automatic position control system, more precisely in the PHS (pitch horizon scanner), caused problems: It led to a significantly higher fuel consumption and was also responsible for the fact that Carpenter had to initiate and control the reentry manually. As a result of the incorrectly working attitude control, the capsule was misaligned by 25 degrees with respect to the yaw axis, so that the thrust did not go in the right direction, which resulted in a deviation of 270 km from the planned landing point. Insufficient thrust from the brake rocket caused a further 100 km of deviation, and the ignition, which was delayed by a few seconds (as a result of manual activation), contributed another 30 km. In total, Aurora 7 missed the forecast landing point by 400 kilometers and went down outside the radio range of the rescue fleet.
About half an hour after splashdown reached the first aircraft Carpenter, who now waited on a life raft next to the landing capsule. After three hours, he was brought aboard a helicopter that had taken off from the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid . The destroyer USS Farragut , which was at the landing site first, stayed with the lander until it was recovered by the USS John R. Pierce six hours later.
Significance to the Mercury program
At NASA they were completely satisfied with the rocket and the spaceship. The second Mercury flight with three orbits was also successful, so it was now possible to consider extending the flight duration. The Soviet Union still held the record with 17 orbits of the earth, an achievement that the US could not yet approach.
Carpenter's in-flight performance, on the other hand, became the subject of controversial debates, mainly because of the excessive fuel consumption in orbit and the reentry problems it caused. Flight director Christopher C. Kraft was annoyed with Carpenter for not following ground control instructions and paying too little attention to the instruments. Even at Kraft's instigation, Carpenter was never again assigned to a space flight.
Admittedly, the high fuel consumption was largely caused by the incorrectly working automatic attitude control system. NASA's internal analysis after the flight classified this malfunction as "mission critical" and certified Carpenter to have responded adequately and thus confirmed that human pilots are able to successfully compensate for the failure of automatic systems.
Web links
- NASA: Mission Overview (English)
- NASA: Final Report (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Results of the Second United States Manned Orbital Spaceflight, NASA SP-6, p. 66.
- ↑ Scott Carpenter and Kris Stoever: For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey Of A Mercury Astronaut . NAL Trade, 2003, ISBN 978-0-451-21105-7 (Retrieved October 28, 2016).
- ↑ Mercury Atlas 7 . NASA. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
- ^ Scott Carpenter, One of the Original Seven Astronauts, Is Dead at 88 . New York Times . October 10th, 2013.
- ↑ NASA History Series: Flight of Aurora 7 in "This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury" (English)
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