It was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, yesterday morning on its Aurora-7 spacecraft, located on top of a giant Atlas rocket.
He followed almost the same path as Colonel John Glenn in his capsule “Friendship 7” on February 20th.
Carpenter’s return to earth at the end of the third orbit yesterday was accompanied by a 35-minute silence.
Ships and planes waiting for the astronaut in the recovery zone 800 miles southeast of Cape Canaveral did not see his parachute with candy stripes flutter into the sea.
The 3,000-degree heat at re-entry blocked all radio communication with the capsule.
Concerned scientists estimated that he was supposed to land in the ocean at 12.41, but there was no signal from him.
As planes flew over the Atlantic, crowds gathered in front of TVs in homes and shop windows.
The British device led to the opening of the capsule by a search aircraft of the US Navy.
The plane received signals from the lead beacon on the capsule and found Carpenter sitting on a life raft next to the capsule.
The mistake of an American astronaut is threatened by a three-orbit space mission
(May 28)
CAP CANVERAL, May 27 – Malcolm astronaut Scott Carpenter’s human error nearly ruined the success of his three-orbit flight on Thursday.
The 37-year-old found out about it yesterday. The lieutenant commander of the Navy completed the last stage of his interrogations by technical and engineering experts on the island of Grand Turk in the Bahamas.
Today, Carpenter will return to Cape Canaveral, Florida, for a meeting with his family and a public reception.
The mistake was that Carpenter forgot to turn off the tap and drained the fuel supply to a dangerously low level.
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A spokesman for the astronauts lieutenant colonel. John Powers described the near depletion of one of the spacecraft’s two tanks with hydrogen peroxide fuel, which was used to spray through nozzles outside the spacecraft to change its attitude in space.
Carpenter steered the Aurora 7 by hand as it flashed over the Pacific Ocean in its final orbit just before re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
https://www.watoday.com.au/world/north-america/from-the-archives-1962-rousing-welcome-for-astronaut-after-long-sea-ordeal-20220518-p5amfq.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed
