Mercury program Archives

July 9, 2021July 9, 2021 by Matt Williams

Wally Funk From the Mercury 13 Will be Joining Jeff Bezos on his Flight to the Edge of Space

Flight instructor Wally Funk posing in front of a USAF fighter. Credit: NASA

This month, two billionaires will be flying to space aboard their very own commercial launch vehicles. The first to go will be Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who will be a passenger aboard the inaugural crewed flight of the New Shepard on July 20^th. Mark Bezos, Jeff’s brother, will be accompanying him on this flight, as will the person who won the auction that wrapped up on June 12th (they bid $28 million for the seat).

On July 1st, Blue Origin announced that the fourth passenger on this historic flight would be Wally Funk, a pioneer in aerospace who trained to become an astronaut back in the 1960s. As part of the “Mercury 13” Woman in Space Program, Funk was one of several qualified test pilots and graduated at the top of her class. And now, sixty years later, she is once again a pioneer since she is the oldest person that has ever flown to space.

June 6, 2015October 22, 2020 by Matt Williams

What Does NASA Stand For?

Chances are that if you have lived on this planet for the past half-century, you’ve heard of NASA. As the agency that is in charge of America’s space program, they put a man on the Moon, launched the Hubble Telescope, helped establish the International Space Station, and sent dozens of probes and shuttles into space.

But do you know what the acronym NASA actually stands for? Well, NASA stands for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. As such, it oversees America’s spaceflight capabilities and conducts valuable research in space. NASA also has various programs on Earth dedicated to flight, hence why the term “Aeronautics” appears in the agency’s name.

May 24, 2012December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

50 Years Ago Today: The Flight of Aurora 7

Scott Carpenter with John Glenn just before the launch of Aurora 7. Credit: NASA

Fifty years ago today, May 24, 1962 astronaut Scott Carpenter launched in his Aurora 7 capsule. This was the fourth manned mission and the second orbital flight of the Mercury program. This video celebrates the Aurora 7 flight, which successfully made three Earth orbits. But a targeting mishap during reentry took the spacecraft about 400 km (250 miles) off course, delaying recovery of Carpenter and the capsule. Carpenter was picked up after nearly 3 hours in the water, and the Mercury capsule was not retrieved until about 6 hours later.

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May 13, 2011December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Fast Cars and Hot Rod Astronauts

Apollo 12 astronauts (L-R) Charles 'Pete' Conrad Jr., Richard Francis Gordon Jr., and Alan LaVern Bean with their identical 1969 Corvette Stingray coupes. The coupes features a 390-hp, 427 V-8 and black-accented Riverside Gold color scheme designed by Bean. Photo by Ralph Morse / Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images.

Corvettes were synonymous with the first US astronauts. Why? The story goes that a Florida car dealer named Jim Rathmann had a great marketing idea and negotiated a special lease arrangement with Chevrolet to provide the Mercury 7 astronauts with sports cars worthy of the performance required by a test pilot. The cars were fast and handled like a dream. Plus, the Corvettes back in the early 1960’s had what many would consider “space age” interiors. Six of the Mercury astronauts would take Rathmann up on his Corvette offer, but stalwart family man John Glenn instead decided he wanted a new station wagon. While there are stories of the Mercury astronauts racing each other in their Corvettes, reportedly Glenn’s wagon proved more useful. It was just the thing for those occasions when the seven astronauts needed to travel together.

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These sports cars would continue to be used by Apollo astronauts, and the association between the car and the space program continues even today. For example, the 1995 movie “Apollo 13” featured two era-authentic Corvettes, one of them used in a scene featuring Tom Hanks as astronaut Jim Lovell. The 2009 movie “Star Trek XI” opens in the year 2245, with a 12-year old James T. Kirk driving a 280-year old 1965 Corvette Sting Ray.

On May 7, 2011, approximately 30 of America’s surviving early astronauts gathered in Cocoa Beach, Florida to participate in a parade commemorating the 50th anniversary of Alan Shepard’s historic first flight for a US astronaut. Enjoy the video above where some of the astronauts are interviewed, briefly, and includes some vintage photographs of hot rod astronauts with their fast cars.

Source: GM

January 5, 2011December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

The Mystery of John Glenn’s Fireflies Returns

Astronaut John Glenn as photographed during his space flight by an automatic sequence motion picture camera mounted inside Friendship 7. Credit: NASA

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What were the “fireflies” that John Glenn saw during the first orbital spaceflight for the US? Enjoy a new “you-were-there” look at the stories of early space exploration from the original NASA transcripts, but in a vastly improved format. A new website called Spacelog has put the transcripts in a searchable, linkable format. Spacelog is an open source venture making the transcripts more accessible to the public, and adding photos and timelines in with the text. Currently the Apollo 13 mission and Mercury Friendship 7 mission are available with more coming in the future. A linking feature allows users to Tweet and link to particular parts of the transcripts. As an open source project, Spacelog is also looking for help.

Below is the part of the Friendship 7 transcript where John Glenn describes small, mysteriously illuminated particles surrounding his capsule:

John Glenn

This is Friendship Seven. I’ll try to describe what I’m in here. I am in a big mass of some very small particles, that are brilliantly lit up like they’re luminescent. I never saw anything like it. They round a little; they’re coming by the capsule, and they look like little stars. A whole shower of them coming by.
00 01 15 57

John Glenn
They swirl around the capsule and go in front of the window and they’re all brilliantly lighted. They probably average maybe 7 or 8 feet apart, but I can see them all down below me, also.
00 01 16 06
CAPCOM
Roger, Friendship Seven. Can you hear any impact with the capsule? Over.
00 01 16 10
John Glenn
Negative, negative. They’re very slow; they’re not going away from me more than maybe 3 or 4 miles per hour. They’re going at the same speed I am approximately. They’re only very slightly under my speed. Over.
00 01 16 33
John Glenn
They do, they do have a different motion, though, from me because they swirl around the capsule and then depart back the way I am looking.
00 01 16 46
John Glenn
Are you receiving? Over.

———-

What were these fireflies? In the movie “The Right Stuff” the fireflies were given the illusion of being mystical or perhaps alien — or maybe part of Glenn’s imagination. People in mission control were worried the heat shield on his spacecraft could be falling apart.

The answer wasn’t confirmed until the next Mercury mission, Aurora 7, with astronaut Scott Carpenter on board in May 1962. Carpenter also saw the fireflies, or snowflakes, as he called them, and quickly could identify the source. They were tiny white pieces of frost from the side of the spacecraft. Condensation gathered on the outside of the spacecraft as the capsule passed from the cold orbital darkness and warm sunlight, and then froze again, creating a layer of frost. As the spacecraft again came into sunlight, the frost flakes would come off and float around the capsule. The sunlight also illuminated them, making them “luminescent.” When Carpenter banged on the side of the capsule, more flakes came off and were visible.