“I’m having a ball up here drifting,” said NASA astronaut Wally Schirra as he orbited the Earth six times during the Mercury-Atlas 8, the agency’s fifth manned space flight — 60 years ago. He proved that if the pilot was allowed to take control of the flight, he could conserve fuel and solve problems as they arise.
On Aug. 14, 2017, a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft was launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. It was a commercial resupply mission delivering supplies to the International Space Station. Four days later, the agency’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-M lifted off on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
In the summer of 1961, NASA was ready to launch its second piloted spaceflight. It was the next step in Project Mercury’s program to study human capabilities during space travel. Two months earlier, Alan Shepard’s textbook sub-orbital mission made it look easy. But, the splashdown and recovery of the encore flight dramatically demonstrated it is a perilous endeavor requiring attention to detail and extensive preflight training.
When John F. Kennedy was sworn in as president in 1961, he promised to reach for a “New Frontier.” Attention abroad concentrated on the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Closer to home, there was increasing unrest among those who were being left behind simply because of their race. America’s space agency soon would be thrust into the forefront of both issues.
A small group of NASA engineers had an idea called, “Lunar Orbit Rendezvous.” A 1961 letter to NASA’s associate administrator proposed separate vehicles, one to land on the lunar surface while another circled the Moon.