NASA Project Mercury - Space Project Mercury - Aurora 7 (1962) - CharlieDeanArchives
Video from the channel Charlie Dean Archives about Mercury-Atlas 7, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 29:07. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.
What it shows
A 1962 film recounting Scott Carpenter's orbital flight in the Mercury capsule Aurora 7 (mission MA-7). It compares the Wright brothers' first flights at Kitty Hawk with the first crewed flights into space: Orville Wright saw the Earth from 100 feet, Alan Shepard from 100 miles. After recalling the flights of Shepard, Grissom and Glenn, it presents Carpenter's goal: to carry out scientific work in orbit. It includes the countdown, liftoff, excerpts of the astronaut's conversations with mission control and the tracking stations, reentry and recovery.
When and where it was filmed
The launch took place on May 24, 1962 from Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral, after a weather hold at T-11 minutes. It shows the launch bunker, Mercury Control Center, the Atlas rocket with 360,000 pounds of thrust (about 1,600 kN), and contact with the stations at Kano (Nigeria), Muchea and Woomera (Australia), Canton Island, Guaymas (Mexico), and a tracking ship in the Indian Ocean. The recovery force gathered 20 ships, 110 aircraft and 13,000 personnel from the four branches of the armed forces.
Context
In orbit, at an altitude of 99 miles (about 160 km) and over 17,000 miles per hour, Carpenter kept the spent Atlas stage in view, an observation useful for future orbital rendezvous. He took readings with a photometer, observed the haze layer already seen on earlier flights, checked surface-tension effects in a liquid experiment, and released a four-color balloon, of which only the orange and silver were clearly visible. He identified the snowflake-like particles Glenn had seen as frost shed from the capsule. On the third orbit, running low on fuel, he completed the retrorocket firing manually; during reentry the heat shield withstood temperatures of 3,600 degrees and ionization cut off communications. Computers at the Goddard center calculated it would splash down about 250 miles (about 400 km) beyond the planned point. A P2V aircraft tracked its radio beacon, a team parachuted in with rafts and a flotation collar, and helicopters from the carrier Intrepid picked up the astronaut. The destroyer Pierce recovered the capsule, and Carpenter spent two days of technical debriefing on Grand Turk Island.