Learning of the Agena's nearly perfect orbit, Armstrong said, "Beautiful, we will take that one."47 The catch came unglued and Gordon, the backup pilot, tried the fitting a few times to prove to Scott that it was working. Just a little thing like that, Scott thought, "might have cost us a launch," but he could not help smiling as he watched Conrad sweat over the job. Backup command pilot Conrad and McDonnell pad leader Guenter Wendt began digging it out.
#Agena flights full#
As the flight-preparation crew helped harness Scott to his parachute, they found one of its catches full of glue.
Fourteen minutes before the Atlas-Agena lifted, Armstrong and Scott slid through the spacecraft hatches into their couches. With one up and one to go, attention turned to 19. Planners had wondered if the Agena could so position itself that astronauts could catch it. The engine ignited and carried the target into a 298-kilometer circular orbit. The crucial test for the Agena came with the firing of its main engine, and the engineers crossed their fingers and held their breaths. After a short coast, its secondary propulsion system burst into life. In a little more than five minutes, the Atlas had done its job. The sustainer engine rammed the target back on track. Its trajectory was at first low and to the right (south) of the intended flightpath. The target launch vehicle lifted from pad 14 at 10 o'clock in the morning. This time nothing marred the countdown of the Atlas-Agena or the Gemini space vehicle. On 16 March 1966, five months after Walter Schirra and Thomas Stafford had been left at the starting gate in NASA's first attempt to launch two vehicles toward rendezvous on the same day, NASA tried again. Alexander, Published as NASA Special Publication-4203 in the NASA History Series, 1977. Official NASA Account of the Mission from On the Shoulders of Titans: A History of Project Gemini, by Barton C. The crew spent all night in the water before being picked up by a US Navy destroyer. Although the crew wanted to press on with the mission and Scott's planned space walk, ground control ordered an emergency landing in the mid-Pacific. Finally he shut the main Gemini reaction control system down and regained control with the reentry control system thrusters, using 75% of that system's fuel. Near structural limits and blackout, Armstrong undocked, figuring the problem was in the Agena, which only made it worse. A stuck thruster on Gemini put the docked assembly into a wild high speed gyration. Gemini 8 (1966-20 A) and Gemini 8 adapter module (1966-20 C) separated Mar 17.13įirst successful docking with an Agena target vehicle was immediately followed by a major space emergency.Of problems with the spacecraft control system crew was forced to undock Ĭrew regained control of their spacecraft by using reentry control system, First succesfull docking with unmanned target "Agena" satellite (GATV 8) on Mar 16.97 ĭuring the docking both spacecrafts get in uncontrolled stagging because.Launch, orbit & landing data: Designation
0 kommentar(er)
