Space Officials Puzzled Over Mishaps

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29832, 26 May 1962, Page 11

Space Officials Puzzled Over Mishaps

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) CAPE CANAVERAL, May 25.

Lieutenant - Commander Malcolm Scott Carpenter overshot his landing target by 250 miles yesterday because of a too-shallow angle of re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere, according to space officials. They also confessed themselves puzzled by the excessive use of fuel by the capsule’s control mechanisms. The operations director of the Carpenter flight, Mr Walt Williams, told a press conference last night that Carpenter’s capsule was too shallow by eight to 10 degrees from the 34 degree angle of re-entry. . He said that Carpenter had

performed many more observations and other manoeuvres during the early stages ol his flight than LieutenantColonel Glenn had and this caused a heavy drain of fuel. However, there was an “unexplained, excessive” use of fuel between Hawaii and California on the third orbit. Mr Williams said he had no immediate explanation for the capsule being off “attitude’’ at the moment of reverse rocket ignition, the Associated Press reported. He said that, because of the off-angle, the retro-rockets fired about five seconds too late. This, he said, would have contributed to an overshot of 20 or so miles, but it was the shallow re-entry angle which added the most mileage. Radio Failure Concerning the communications failure at the end of the flight, Mr Williams said: “We always lose communications for several minutes during re-entry because the tremendous heat prevents radio signals from penetrating to the capsule. Usually

we are able‘to resume communications fairly quickly, but we aren’t sure yet just what happened today. It is possible Carpenter was just out of range of telemetry and by the time a plane got within range, Scott already was out of the capsule and therefore out of voice communication."

On other things that went wrong, officials commented: Excessive use of hydrogen peroxide fuel in the automatic and semi-automatic “fly-by-wire’’ altitude control systems caused some concern that the flight might have to be terminated after two orbits. But this was corrected by switching to the fully manual system. High temperature readings in the space suit resulted when Carpenter was unable immediately to reach a correct setting on the regulator. A false radio signal resulted in a ground station reading of too high a body temperature. A check with Carpenter proved the signal erroneous. ’ There were no explanations for a brief report by Carpenter that he saw some smoke at the time of reverse rocket firing. Although the balloon which Carpenter trailed behind the capsule failed to detach when a signal was given, it caused no trouble and burned up early during re-entry. It provided valuable information on man’s colour and depth perception in space. Medical Check Stanley White, the astronaut's doctor, said: “On a quick look, Scott’s reactions and medical readings were much like Glenn’s. We saw no particular problems and there was no indication of space sickness.'*

Captam Virgil Grissom, another astronaut who was ground communicator at Cape Canaveral, said Carpenter’s observations of the "space fireflies" seemed to be different from those made by Glenn. Carpenter, like the Soviet cosmonaut. Major Gherman Titov, said they looked like snowflakes but fuller descriptions were likely to come later. The Mercury Project director (Mr Robert Gilruth) said there would be no decision on what type of flight the next manned space attempt would be until Carpenter’s de-brieflng was over and all the data received was analysed. He said a five-orbit mission had been talked about but this had “no status” at the present. y