Everything you never knew you wanted to know about the Mercury Project
BA-1
From RixWiki
| Project Mercury Missions | ||
| ||
| Flight Order | ||
| LJ-1 | 12 Aug 1959 | |
| BJ-1 | 9 Sep 1959 | |
| LJ-6 | 4 Oct 1959 | |
| LJ-1A | 4 Nov 1959 | |
| LJ-2 | 4 Dec 1959 | |
| LJ-1B | 21 Jan 1960 | |
| Beach Abort | 9 May 1960 | |
| MA-1 | 29 Jul 1960 | |
| LJ-5 | 8 Nov 1960 | |
| MR-1 | 21 Nov 1960 | |
| MR-1A | 19 Dec 1960 | |
| MR-2 | 31 Jan 1961 | |
| MA-2 | 21 Feb 1961 | |
| LJ-5A | 18 Mar 1961 | |
| MR-BD | 24 Mar 1961 | |
| MA-3 | 25 Apr 1961 | |
| LJ-5B | 28 Apr 1961 | |
| MR-3 | 5 May 1961 | |
| MR-4 | 21 Jul 1961 | |
| MA-4 | 12 Sep 1961 | |
| MA-5 | 29 Nov 1961 | |
| MA-6 | 20 Feb 1962 | |
| MA-7 | 24 May 1962 | |
| MA-8 | 3 Oct 1962 | |
| MA-9 | 15-16 May 1962 | |
Contents |
Introduction
From SP-45 Mercury project summary
Mission Beach Abort 1 (BA-1) was accomplished on May 9,1960, from the Wallops Station launch site and marked the first time that a production spacecraft under went a major qualification flight test. Production spacecraft 1 was a reasonably complete spacecraft and contained many systems that later spacecraft would be equipped with. It was launched on an abort sequence from a launcher on the ground. The escape-rocket motor provided the impulse as it would on an escape from a launch vehicle while still on the pad. The test was successful and the feasibility of an abort from a pad was adequately demonstrated. Though the mission was successful, certain modifications to spacecraft equipment were found to be desirable after the performance of these systems was analyzed. Although separation of the escape tower was accomplished, it was not considered satisfactory because of the small separation distance provided. This resulted in the redesign of the escape-system jettison rocket-motor nozzles. The single nozzle was replaced by a tri-nozzle assembly to prevent rocket-motor performance loss by impingement of the exhaust plumes on the escape tower structure. This modification proved to be satisfactory and was retained for the remainder of the Mercury program. Another anomaly was the poor performance of the spacecraft telemetry transmitters. Investigation showed that the cause of this poor performance was a reversal of the cabling of the transmitter systems; thus, for the first time in the program, inadvertent cross connection of connectors had been deleted.
Launched: May 9, 1960
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/history/mercury/beach-abort/beach-abort.html
Hardware
This mission used spacecraft 1
