A bit of U.S. manned space flight trivia.
I remember the Mercury flight of Leroy Gordon Cooper in 1963, but I forgot that he piloted his spacecraft to reentry after a failure of the automatic flight control system.
U.S. Space Flight History posted the following on Facebook:
U.S. astronaut L. Gordon Cooper Jr. is extracted from the Faith 7 spacecraft at the conclusion of the Mercury-Atlas 9 mission on May 16, 1963. Cooper, like Wally Schirra during Mercury 8, elected to remain inside the capsule until it was hoisted aboard the recovery aircraft carrier. Mercury 9 was the last Project Mercury mission. Cooper completed 22 Earth orbits in 34 hours and piloted a manual reentry after the automatic flight control system failed. Cooper's famed piloting abilities were demonstrated as he made the most accurate landing of the entire Mercury program while hand flying his spacecraft.
No comments:
Post a Comment