Fifty years ago, Apollo 7 ends—‘101% successful’
2018-10-22
Apollo 7, with astronauts Walter M. Schirra Jr., Donn F. Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham aboard, splashed down on Oct. 22, 1968, ending a highly successful engineering test flight. The landing occurred in the Atlantic Ocean, southeast of Bermuda.
All mission objectvies were accomplished and, with a duration of nearly 11 days, the flight proved the ability of the spacecraft and crew to complete an eight-day lunar landing mission. All spacecraft systems performed essentially as expected, including the all-important Space Propulsion System (SPS) engine, critical on future missions to place crews into and return them from lunar orbit. Apollo 7 accomplished many firsts, including the first three-person American spaceflight, the first live TV downlink from an American spacecraft, the first Saturn rocket to launch a crew into space and the first time hot food was available to a crew in space.
Views of the Apollo 7 astronauts taken near the end of the successful 11-day mission. From left to right: Walter M. Schirra Jr., Donn F. Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham. Image Credits: NASA
During the last three days of the mission, Schirra, Eisele and Cunningham completed two more of the eight planned tests of the SPS. The sixth burn on Flight Day (FD)9 was the second minimum-duration burn, lasting only half a second, to validate how closely the guidance and navigation system could control a very short-duration burn. The seventh burn on FD10 lasted just under eight seconds and placed the spacecraft in the proper position for re-entry the next day.
The Apollo 7 crew treated viewers to two more live TV broadcasts. The sixth event on FD9 was an operational test of the camera, showing a static view of their activities inside the capsule. At the end of the broadcast, the crew proudly showed off their nine-day-old beards. The next day, they turned on the TV camera for the seventh and final broadcast of the mission. Viewers saw the crew going about their work at their crew stations, the astronauts again showing off their facial hair. They also narrated how they perform Earth observation photography through the spacecraft’s five windows, adding that they could easily see jet contrails sometimes extending for hundreds of miles. They signed off this last broadcast with a cue card that said, “As the Sun Sinks Slowly in the West.”
In other activities during the last three mission days, the crew completed the second passive thermal test, putting their spacecraft into a slow end-over-end maneuver. During the 45-minute test, the spacecraft completed a full rotation every 20 minutes. The crew wanted to expose as much of the onboard film as possible, so they requested that mission control send up additional Earth observation targets for them to image. One notable target imaged was Typhoon Gloria, which was churning in the western Pacific Ocean.
Left: View of the eye of Typhoon Gloria in the Pacific Ocean taken on the 10th day of the Apollo 7 mission. Right: View of the Gulf of Mexico taken on the 10th day of the Apollo 7 mission, a few days after Hurricane Gladys passed through the area. Image Credits: NASA
In preparation for re-entry, Schirra put on his spacesuit and strapped himself into the crew couch with no gloves or helmet on. This was his preferred approach for the re-entry, during which increasing pressure inside the spacecraft—from the orbital pressure of five pounds per square inch (psi), rapidly increasing to 14.7 psi at splashdown—might cause problems with their ears. With the nasal congestion from their colds, the crew might have difficulty clearing their ears while wearing helmets, and Schirra was concerned about ruptured eardrums. After much discussion, mission control reluctantly agreed that they could re-enter with their helmets off.
Left: Apollo 7 in the Atlantic Ocean shortly after splashdown, photographed by one of the U.S. Navy swimmers assisting with the recovery. Right: One of the Apollo 7 astronauts being lifted aboard the recovery helicopter shortly after splashdown. Image Credits: NASA
During Apollo 7’s 163rd revolution around the Earth, about 500 miles east of Hawaii, the crew fired the spacecraft’s SPS for the eighth and final time for just under 12 seconds to begin their re-entry. Two minutes later, the Command Module separated from the Service Module, and with its heatshield facing in the direction of flight, began to encounter the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere. From the friction of re-entry, a sheath of ionized gases formed around the capsule, temporarily blocking radio communications with the crew, who experienced about three Gs, or three times the force of Earth’s gravity, during the rapid deceleration. A drogue chute deployed at 50,000 feet altitude to further slow the craft down, followed by the three main parachutes deploying at 20,000 feet.
Apollo 7 splashed down in a light rain at a speed of 22 mph, about two miles from the targeted landing point and eight miles from the prime recovery ship, the aircraft carrier USS Essex. The total flight time was 260 hours and 9 minutes. The capsule initially assumed a nose down orientation, but flotation bags inflated to right it to a nose-up position. Recovery swimmers soon attached a flotation collar around the capsule. Within a few minutes, the astronauts emerged one by one from the caspule and were hoisted aboard the prime recovery helicopter and ferried to the deck of the Essex, where the ship’s captain and hundreds of cheering sailors greeted them. They were whisked below decks for showers and a medical exam. President Lyndon B. Johnson telephoned to congratulate them and said, “We here in the capital, and all over this country and the world, are so very proud of you this morning.”
Left: Apollo 7 crew of (left to right) Schirra, Eisele and Cunningham on the deck of the prime recovery ship USS Essex. Right: From left, Flight Directors Gene Kranz, Glynn Lunney and Gerry Griffin smoke celebratory cigars in mission control after the successful splashdown of Apollo 7. Image Credits: NASA
The U.S. Navy flew the Apollo 7 crew back to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center the day after splashdown, where they spent several days debriefing managers and engineers about all aspects of their successful mission. They returned to Houston’s Ellington Air Force Base on Oct. 26, where they were greeted by a large crowd of media and well-wishers, and they were reunited with their families.
Navy personnel hoisted the Apollo 7 spacecraft aboard the Essex about an hour after they recovered the astronauts. They offloaded the capsule from the Essex once it reached the Norfolk Naval Air Station in Virginia. From there, it was flown to California and returned to its manufacturer, North American Rockwell Space Division in Downey, for postflight inspection. The Apollo 7 CM is currently on display at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas.
Left: Apollo 7 astronauts returning to Kennedy Space Center. From left, Cunningham, Schirra and Eisele, mostly hidden by the limousine. Right: The Apollo 7 crew upon their return to Ellington Air Force Base in Houston. Image Credits: NASA
In summarizing the mission, General Samuel C. Phillips, director of the Apollo Program Office at NASA Headquarters, declared that Apollo 7 “accomplished 101 percent” of its planned objectives. He added that much work still remained before NASA decided to send Apollo 8 on a lunar-orbit mission, a decision formally announced in November 1968. The success of Apollo 7 gave the nation confidence to be able to meet President Kennedy’s commitment of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.
John Uri
NASA Johnson Space Center
All mission objectvies were accomplished and, with a duration of nearly 11 days, the flight proved the ability of the spacecraft and crew to complete an eight-day lunar landing mission. All spacecraft systems performed essentially as expected, including the all-important Space Propulsion System (SPS) engine, critical on future missions to place crews into and return them from lunar orbit. Apollo 7 accomplished many firsts, including the first three-person American spaceflight, the first live TV downlink from an American spacecraft, the first Saturn rocket to launch a crew into space and the first time hot food was available to a crew in space.
Views of the Apollo 7 astronauts taken near the end of the successful 11-day mission. From left to right: Walter M. Schirra Jr., Donn F. Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham. Image Credits: NASA
During the last three days of the mission, Schirra, Eisele and Cunningham completed two more of the eight planned tests of the SPS. The sixth burn on Flight Day (FD)9 was the second minimum-duration burn, lasting only half a second, to validate how closely the guidance and navigation system could control a very short-duration burn. The seventh burn on FD10 lasted just under eight seconds and placed the spacecraft in the proper position for re-entry the next day.
The Apollo 7 crew treated viewers to two more live TV broadcasts. The sixth event on FD9 was an operational test of the camera, showing a static view of their activities inside the capsule. At the end of the broadcast, the crew proudly showed off their nine-day-old beards. The next day, they turned on the TV camera for the seventh and final broadcast of the mission. Viewers saw the crew going about their work at their crew stations, the astronauts again showing off their facial hair. They also narrated how they perform Earth observation photography through the spacecraft’s five windows, adding that they could easily see jet contrails sometimes extending for hundreds of miles. They signed off this last broadcast with a cue card that said, “As the Sun Sinks Slowly in the West.”
In other activities during the last three mission days, the crew completed the second passive thermal test, putting their spacecraft into a slow end-over-end maneuver. During the 45-minute test, the spacecraft completed a full rotation every 20 minutes. The crew wanted to expose as much of the onboard film as possible, so they requested that mission control send up additional Earth observation targets for them to image. One notable target imaged was Typhoon Gloria, which was churning in the western Pacific Ocean.
Left: View of the eye of Typhoon Gloria in the Pacific Ocean taken on the 10th day of the Apollo 7 mission. Right: View of the Gulf of Mexico taken on the 10th day of the Apollo 7 mission, a few days after Hurricane Gladys passed through the area. Image Credits: NASA
In preparation for re-entry, Schirra put on his spacesuit and strapped himself into the crew couch with no gloves or helmet on. This was his preferred approach for the re-entry, during which increasing pressure inside the spacecraft—from the orbital pressure of five pounds per square inch (psi), rapidly increasing to 14.7 psi at splashdown—might cause problems with their ears. With the nasal congestion from their colds, the crew might have difficulty clearing their ears while wearing helmets, and Schirra was concerned about ruptured eardrums. After much discussion, mission control reluctantly agreed that they could re-enter with their helmets off.
Left: Apollo 7 in the Atlantic Ocean shortly after splashdown, photographed by one of the U.S. Navy swimmers assisting with the recovery. Right: One of the Apollo 7 astronauts being lifted aboard the recovery helicopter shortly after splashdown. Image Credits: NASA
During Apollo 7’s 163rd revolution around the Earth, about 500 miles east of Hawaii, the crew fired the spacecraft’s SPS for the eighth and final time for just under 12 seconds to begin their re-entry. Two minutes later, the Command Module separated from the Service Module, and with its heatshield facing in the direction of flight, began to encounter the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere. From the friction of re-entry, a sheath of ionized gases formed around the capsule, temporarily blocking radio communications with the crew, who experienced about three Gs, or three times the force of Earth’s gravity, during the rapid deceleration. A drogue chute deployed at 50,000 feet altitude to further slow the craft down, followed by the three main parachutes deploying at 20,000 feet.
Apollo 7 splashed down in a light rain at a speed of 22 mph, about two miles from the targeted landing point and eight miles from the prime recovery ship, the aircraft carrier USS Essex. The total flight time was 260 hours and 9 minutes. The capsule initially assumed a nose down orientation, but flotation bags inflated to right it to a nose-up position. Recovery swimmers soon attached a flotation collar around the capsule. Within a few minutes, the astronauts emerged one by one from the caspule and were hoisted aboard the prime recovery helicopter and ferried to the deck of the Essex, where the ship’s captain and hundreds of cheering sailors greeted them. They were whisked below decks for showers and a medical exam. President Lyndon B. Johnson telephoned to congratulate them and said, “We here in the capital, and all over this country and the world, are so very proud of you this morning.”
Left: Apollo 7 crew of (left to right) Schirra, Eisele and Cunningham on the deck of the prime recovery ship USS Essex. Right: From left, Flight Directors Gene Kranz, Glynn Lunney and Gerry Griffin smoke celebratory cigars in mission control after the successful splashdown of Apollo 7. Image Credits: NASA
The U.S. Navy flew the Apollo 7 crew back to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center the day after splashdown, where they spent several days debriefing managers and engineers about all aspects of their successful mission. They returned to Houston’s Ellington Air Force Base on Oct. 26, where they were greeted by a large crowd of media and well-wishers, and they were reunited with their families.
Navy personnel hoisted the Apollo 7 spacecraft aboard the Essex about an hour after they recovered the astronauts. They offloaded the capsule from the Essex once it reached the Norfolk Naval Air Station in Virginia. From there, it was flown to California and returned to its manufacturer, North American Rockwell Space Division in Downey, for postflight inspection. The Apollo 7 CM is currently on display at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas.
Left: Apollo 7 astronauts returning to Kennedy Space Center. From left, Cunningham, Schirra and Eisele, mostly hidden by the limousine. Right: The Apollo 7 crew upon their return to Ellington Air Force Base in Houston. Image Credits: NASA
In summarizing the mission, General Samuel C. Phillips, director of the Apollo Program Office at NASA Headquarters, declared that Apollo 7 “accomplished 101 percent” of its planned objectives. He added that much work still remained before NASA decided to send Apollo 8 on a lunar-orbit mission, a decision formally announced in November 1968. The success of Apollo 7 gave the nation confidence to be able to meet President Kennedy’s commitment of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.
John Uri
NASA Johnson Space Center
Apollo 7 Command Module on display at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas. Image courtesy of the Frontiers of Flight Museum.