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Los Angeles Times
February 21, 1962
In the 1962 mission of the Friendship 7 spacecraft, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth. As a part of the Mercury Program, the success of this flight gave the United States a boost in its ongoing “space race” with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
By Marvin Miles
Cape Canaveral—Astronaut John H. Glenn Jr. streaked through three orbits of the earth Tuesday in his Friendship 7 spacecraft and was recovered unharmed in the Atlantic. The dramatic flight gripped the nation in intense excitement for 296 minutes as Glenn reported calmly from space and controlled his capsule manually for much of the mission.
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Breathless televiewers across the country watched the thunderous, long-awaited launch that hurled the titanium capsule into the airless cold of space at 17,545 m.p.h. and three times from Tuesday into Wednesday and back again while Glenn flew weightless and soared to a peak altitude of 162.3 miles near Australia.
Friendship 7 flashed over Southern California on its last orbit, beginning its long fall from space that ended with a bullseye parachute descent into the Atlantic just five miles from the destroyer USS Noa in the Atlantic 156 miles east of Grand Turk Island.
The capsule splashed gently into the sea at 11:43 a.m. (PST), four hours, 56 minutes after launch at 6:47 a.m. (PST) and was sighted in descent by the Noa which raced to the scene from her position some 50 miles from the main rescue ship, the carrier USS Randolph.
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The capsule was plucked from the sea and hauled aboard the Noa 21 minutes later and there was some difficulty in clearing a way for Glenn to exit from the top of the spacecraft.
While helping in the exit operation, the exuberant astronaut reported from inside the capsule that he was in excellent condition—a report that was verified shortly when he crawled onto the deck with a broad, freckle-faced grin after exploding the capsule's hatch open to get out of the space craft.
The astronaut apparently withstood the rigors of extended weightlessness with ease and there were no adverse physical reports during the flight either from Glenn himself or from military doctors who followed his reactions by means of telemetry during the long mission. Only major problem was a malfunction in the spacecraft's automatic stabilization and control system that forced Glenn to “fly by wire”—control the capsule manually—for most of the flight instead of relying on his auto-pilot.
But he repeatedly reported he was having no difficulty in maintaining the capsule's attitude as he desired and radioed that the spacecraft handled easily and smoothly under manual control which actuated electronic signals to attitude control jets in the capsule.
This malfunction was believed possibly the same that caused the return of Enos, the chimpanzee, from orbit after two circles of the earth, and Glenn's handling of the situation emphasized the reason for man in space.
The only injury he sustained in the hazardous mission—several skinned knuckles—occurred in blowing the hatch.
Glenn was transferred by helicopter to the recovery carrier USS Randolph where he was given a preliminary physical checkup. He then was flown to Grand Turk Island for a 48-hour rest and physical examination.
Earlier it was indicated he would fly to Washington after the two-day rest for presidential honors, public acclaim and a national press conference.
However, the White House indicated late Tuesday that President Kennedy will fly here Friday to honor Glenn. There was no indication whether there will be a press conference at that time or whether this meeting will preclude public honors in the capital.
At one point during the flight, through a sunrise area over the Pacific, Glenn reported an unexplained phenomenon—thousands of luminous particles moving through space near the capsule and at about the same speed.
At another point, he could see the lights of Perth and Rockingham, Australia, and asked that the residents of these cities be thanked for turning them on for him.
He remarked about the brilliant blue of the horizon as he swept toward the Canary Islands on his first orbit and frequently, in a calm voice, he assured tense controllers at the world - wide tracking stations, “I feel fine —I'm having no problems at all.”
Once he reported seeing the whole state of Florida “like a relief map” and added he could see westward as far as the Mississippi Delta.
On one occasion he left off an unfinished conversation with a ground controller with the remark: “See you later on the way back.”
And after scorching downward through re-entry with its heavy-G forces and 3,000-deg. heat on the shield at the base of the capsule, he cracked:
“Boy, that was a real fireball!”
Glenn was busy throughout the mission controlling the spacecraft's attitude manually, communicating with ground stations, monitoring and managing capsule systems, controlling the spacecraft in pitch, roll and yaw axes, studying the heavens, the earth and global weather patterns, eating and drinking from experimental containers, evaluating capsule performance, and analyzing his own reactions to space flight.
Anxious millions followed the astronaut's dangerous flight by radio reports from space as the capsule rushed Glenn alternately through daylight and darkness at a speed of about five miles a second on a general west-east course high over the tracking networks that plotted his path second by second and checked his every heartbeat.
The flawless flight that pitted man and science against gravity and the chill vacuum of space climaxed the U.S. space program to date, openly—win or lose—before all peoples; wrote a brilliant new chapter in American technical achievement, drew immediate praise from President Kennedy, who congratulated Glenn by radiophone aboard the Noa.
Riding high atop 125 tons of explosive propellant, Glenn was launched into a sunny sky by a special Atlas ICBM booster that rammed the froth-coated 93-ft vehicle upward into the vault of space on a bellowing shaft of fire that spat out 360,000 lb. of thrust.
Except for the malfunctioning automatic control system, all systems apparently functioned throughout the long-delayed flight from the instant the exhaust flared on the launch pad until the 63-ft. main recovery parachute snapped out of the capsule and blossomed 10,000 ft. above the Atlantic to catch Friendship 7's long fall out of orbit.
The gnawing fear that Glenn might, through some malfunction, be locked in orbit for a week to 10 days to die in space within 26 hours vanished with the operation of the many complex systems aboard the black, topshaped spacecraft.
All crucial phases of the mission were accomplished perfectly—launch, staging, escape tower ejection, separation from the booster, injection into orbit, capsule turnaround, establishment of re-entry angle, retro-rocket fire to slow the spacecraft out of orbit, parachute deployment and finally, recovery at sea.
Meanwhile, the capsule's life-support system provided Glenn with oxygen, pressurization and coolant aloft. Radio - voice communication held contact with him for much of the mission. And telemetry returned masses of data on more than 80 vital factors for fast analysis.
Five minutes after the launch jammed the tightly-strapped marine down on his contoured couch with a peak 8 Gs in shuddering, roaring acceleration, the rocket sustainer engine cut off in space and Friendship 7 was injected into silent orbit 100 miles above Bermuda to be trailed by the bulky, empty package of its tagalong booster.
Thereafter the 3,000-lb. spacecraft—flying blunt-end forward and tilted up, with Glenn facing backward and down—hurtled the astronaut southeastward:
Across the Atlantic and Central Africa, into approaching night over the Indian Ocean, into Wednesday across Australia, through apogee (162.3-mile-high point, then northeast over the long reach of the Pacific, back into Tuesday, out of the night and back into daylight, across the lower part of Baja California, over Mexico and the southeastern United States, into perigee (99.8-mile-low point), and the beginning of a second orbit little more than 94 minutes after liftoff.
It was on the third orbit, after retro-rockets had fired over the Pacific to initiate re-entry under watch of the Point Arguello tracking station, that Glenn's capsule shot high across San Diego into its long coast-to-coast fall, but Friendship 7 was invisible because of sun glare.
Then came the dramatic finale when the capsule slammed down from space to be caught up by its parachute and lowered gently into the sea at about 30 feet a second.
Source: Los Angeles Times, February 21, 1962.
Appears in
Mercury Program; Astronaut; Glenn, John Herschell, Jr.; Space Exploration
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