Everything you never knew you wanted to know about the Mercury Project
MA-6
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Description of Mission
From SP-45 Mercury Project Summary
Mercury-Atlas 6 (MA-6), the first manned orbital space flight made from the United States, was successfully made on February 20, 1962, from the Cape Canaveral test site. Astronaut John H. Glenn, Jr., was the pilot. The flight was planned for three orbital passes to evaluate the performance of the manned spacecraft systems and to evaluate the effects of space flight on the astronaut and to obtain the astronaut's evaluation of the operational suitability of his spacecraft and supporting systems. All mission objectives for this flight were accomplished. The astronaut's performance during all phases of the mission was excellent, and no deleterious effects of weightlessness were noted.. In general, the spacecraft, launch vehicle, and network system functioned well during the mission. The main anomaly in spacecraft operation was the loss of thrust of two of the 1-pound thrusters which required the astronaut to control the spacecraft for a large part of the mission manually. The orbit was approximately as planned, with perigee at 86.9 nautical miles and apogee at 140.9 nautical miles. During the second and third passes, a false indication from a sensor indicated that the spacecraft heat shield might be unlocked. This indication caused considerable concern and real-time analyses resulted in the recommendation that the expended retropackage be retained on the spacecraft during reentry at the end of the third pass to hold the heat shield in place in the event it was unlatched. The presence of the retropackage during reentry had no detrimental effect on the motions of the spacecraft. Network operation, including telemetry reception, radar tracking, communications, command control, and computing, were excellent and permitted effective flight control during the mission. The spacecraft for this mission was production unit number 13 which was essentially the same as spacecraft 9 used in the MA-5 mission except for those differences required to accommodate the pilot such as the couch, a personal equipment container, filters for the window, and some minor instrumentation and equipment modifications. The launch vehicle was Atlas 109-D. It differed from the MA-5 launch vehicle in only one major respect. For this launch vehicle, the insulation and its retaining bulkhead between the lox and fuel tank dome was removed when it was discovered that fuel had leaked into this insulation prior to launch. The spacecraft landed in the planned recovery area, close to one of the recovery ships. The spacecraft, with the astronaut inside, was recovered approximately 17 minutes after landing. The astronaut was in excellent shape.
MA-6 Gallery
 SC 13 atop Atlas 109-D |
 Spacecraft with catwalk |
 Spacecraft |
 Liftoff of MA-6 |
 Recovery |
 John Glenn Inspects Friendship-7 After Recovery |
More Information
see also: Friendship 7, Spacecraft 13, John Glenn
