Sunday marks the 60th birthday of NASA Astronaut John Glenn He became the first American to orbit the Earth.
On February 20, 1962, a Mercury Ships member of the agency’s three-lane Mercury Atlas 6 mission flew aboard the Friendship 7 spacecraft.
New images released to Fox News show the track – and Glenn – in detail.
Pictures I took “Apollo Remastered” by Andy SaundersUsing source material from Stephen Slater, Head of Research and Production at the Apollo 11 Archives.
Saunders, who is a Previously re-shared photos He regularly posts new photos of the Apollo 15 landing on the moon Twitter and the Instagram†
To create each new photo, Saunders told Fox News he stitched together hundreds of movie frames in different parts of the film — “averaging image noise” — and “stitched” the frames together, with each photo capturing more than 1,000 sample images. The output was then built using digital processing techniques.
You can see Glenn waiting for launch for more than two hours before the spaceflight, as well as in orbit, observing the booster and the curvature of the Earth.
According to NASAThe first launch attempt on January 27 was postponed due to thick clouds that would have prevented the rocket’s ascent from tracking.
Mechanical and weather problems caused further delays.
Glenn boarded the capsule at Launch Complex 14 of what is now the Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
After additional delays, after nearly four hours in the capsule, the countdown reached zero at 9:47 a.m. EDT, and the Atlas rocket’s three main engines were ignited.
After four seconds, the rocket climbed above the launch pad, and after two minutes and nine seconds, the two booster motors failed and were discarded.
After continuing to operate at the power of the center-mounted thruster, the travel motor stalled within five minutes and one second of flight and the Friendship 7 was aborted after two seconds.
Glenn was in orbit, spinning Friendship 7, firing his heat shield in the direction of flight.
Glenn took pictures and reported his condition and the spacecraft, successfully checking the height of the capsule and taking a tube of apple juice and xylitol pills before getting approved for his second job.
When Glenn passed Cape Canaveral during the start of its second orbit, observers noticed a signal that the spacecraft’s landing bag had spread out, meaning that the heat shield needed for re-entry was no longer in place.
Although the engineers thought the signal was a mistake, they devised a plan to keep the retrorocket package after retrofit, with the goal of keeping the tire heat shield in place.
Glenn, who was not explicitly notified of the matter, was advised to make sure the landing bag deployment switch is in the “off” position.
It was given the green light to proceed to its third runway, and controllers instructed Glenn to set the landing suitcase switch to automatic and keep the aft suitcase in place after the light came on.
Glenn reported that he did not hear any bumping sounds during position maneuvers that would indicate a deployed landing bag.
Near California, the spacecraft launched the three reactors to slow its speed, and engineers closely watched Friendship 7’s return to Earth’s atmosphere.
As planned, a temporary radio interference of four minutes and 20 seconds occurred as the spacecraft flew through the upper atmosphere, and Glenn described the return as a “real fireball outside” as parts of the aft torso burned.
He manually checked the altitude of the spacecraft, and eventually ran out of fuel.
At 28,000 feet the rolling canopy appeared early, and at 10,800 feet the 63-foot red-and-white main canopy followed.
Friendship 7 landed near Grand Turk Island at 2:43 PM EST.
Glenn’s flight took four hours, 55 minutes and 23 seconds.
The closest ship, the destroyer USS Noah, completed recovery from the waters and the recovery process took 21 minutes.
Glenn blew out the side hatch and the doctors escorted him to the ship’s sick room for a medical examination. He was then flown to the Grand Turk Island, where he arrived after about five hours of splashing water.
Later, President John F. Kennedy on the Distinguished Service Medal from NASA.
After a tour on February 23, 1963, NASA officially passed Friendship 7 to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
When he was 77 years old in 1998, Glenn got the chance to fly again with six astronauts On board the STS-95 Discovery shuttle flight†
Glenn, Who was born in Ohio? He later became a United States Senator on July 18, 1921, and served in that office for 25 years. He also worked with students at Ohio State University.
Glenn was a Navy pilot during World War II, fought in the Korean War and became a test pilot for aircraft, setting a speed record in 1957 on a less than 3.5-hour flight from Los Angeles to New York.
He died in Columbus, OhioDecember 8, 2016, at the age of 95.
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