William Atkins
Wednesday, 18 February 2009 04:39
Science -
Space
Page 3 of 4
Less then forty-five minutes later he observed his first sunrise from space as he crossed over Canton Island, and less than another forty-five minutes later Glenn saw his second sunset.
Glenn continued to have problems with his automatic yaw thruster on the Friendship 7 for most of the next two orbits. He manually made most of these thrusts for the remainder of the mission.
He also had a supposed problem with his heat shield and landing bag. The sensor indicated they were only hanging on by the straps of the retro package. Normally, the retro pack would be jettisoned, but it remained on for the duration of the mission.
Glenn also found it was troublesome controlling the temperature and humidity of his spacesuit. In addition, because he was controlling the spacecraft manually rather than with the automatic pilot Glenn used up more fuel than normally would have been consumed.
Consequently, because of his fuel consumption and his heat shield problem, ground controllers decided to bring him home after the third orbit.
Glenn returned to Earth, landing in the Atlantic Ocean about 64 kilometers (40 miles) short of the planned landing spot.
He landed on the same day he lifted off, with an official landing at 19:43:02 UTC and a mission elapsed time (MET) of just under five hours (at 4 hours, 55 minutes, 23 seconds).
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