" AURORA 7 " 1962 NASA DOCUMENTARY PROJECT MERCURY SPACE FLIGHT PROGRAM SCOTT CARPENTER XD61284
Video from the channel PeriscopeFilm about Mercury-Atlas 7, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 29:28. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.
What it shows
It is a period film about Scott Carpenter's flight aboard the Mercury capsule Aurora 7. It opens by comparing the Wright brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903, with the first crewed flights of the Mercury program: Alan Shepard's in Freedom 7 on May 5, 1961, Virgil Grissom's, and John Glenn's orbital flight in Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962. Aurora 7 is presented as the next step: using the spacecraft as a scientific platform. The plan included measuring star brightness with a photometer, measuring zodiacal light, photographing the horizon for MIT and the Naval Research Laboratory, photographing clouds for the Weather Bureau, releasing a multicolored balloon, and studying how liquids behave in weightlessness.
When and where it was filmed
It was filmed around the launch on May 24, 1962. At 4:35 a.m. Carpenter boards the spacecraft, mounted on an Atlas at Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral. The film shows the precision radar and the guidance computers, the Mercury Control Center, and the countdown. It includes audio of the liftoff and the flight, with the tracking stations at Kano (Nigeria), Muchea (Australia), Canton Island, and Guaymas (Mexico). Of the rescue, it shows the carrier Intrepid, the destroyer Pierce, and the subsequent debriefing on Grand Turk, which lasted two days.
Context
In orbit, at about 99 miles altitude and more than 17,000 miles per hour, Carpenter photographed the spent Atlas stage and observed Venus and the haze layer on the horizon. Of the balloon he could only clearly make out orange and silver. He saw particles that looked like snowflakes and on the third orbit confirmed they were frost shaken loose from the spacecraft. With very little fuel left, he had to fire the retrorockets by hand over California. The spacecraft came down about 250 miles beyond the planned point, and recovery was delayed by nearly an hour. A P2V aircraft picked up the SARAH beacon, and helicopters from the Intrepid then took off. To recover the spacecraft and the astronaut, 20 ships, 110 aircraft, and 13,000 personnel were deployed.