Sigma 7 The Six Orbits of Walter M Schirra

At 7:15 a.m. on October 3, 1962, Project Mercury Astronaut Walter M. Schirra, Jr., in his Sigma 7 spacecraft, was launched into space and orbited the Earth six times, completing another step in the grand U.S. program to send a man to the Moon and then return him safely to Earth. Because of the brief durations of the previous Mercury flights, the astronauts spent the majority of their flight time in getting to orbit and preparing to leave orbit. Schirra's six-orbit mission lasted more than nine hours, which for the first time allowed an astronaut to experience an extended period of weightlessness. In addition, the time available allowed Schirra to engage in orbital manoeuvring, exercising the various manual and automatic control modes, and to spend time on photography and scientific experiments. After his return to the United States, Schirra described his Sigma 7 mission as "a text book flight." A compilation of inputs from engineering, operations and medical personnel had been integrated into a single flight plan, which Schirra then carried out exactly as he had trained.The unqualified success of this flight paved the way for the planned upcoming one-day mission, an important milestone on the journey to the Moon. In this book the Mission Press Kit and press releases are combined with the major post-mission reports to provide a comprehensive picture of the flight from the planning stages through to its successful completion. Sigma 7 - The NASA Mission Reports is taken directly from the NASA archives. It presents the details of the Mercury-Atlas 8 mission, the overall Project Mercury game plan, astronaut Walter M. Schirra, Jr., and all of the many professional support people and facilities that went into making the mission a complete success. Includes a CD-ROM featuring: An exclusive interview with Mercury Astronaut Walter M. Schirra, Jr; The NASA movie -- Flight of Sigma 7; NASA movie -- Unmanned Mercury Missions; NASA Document (pdf) -- Space Medicine in Project Mercury.

“"Another production of the highly popular series of reproduced NASA Mission Reports..." -- Spaceflight, March 2004.”

Robert Godwin is the owner and founder of Apogee Space Books. He is also the Space Curator at the Canadian Air & Space Museum. He has written or edited over 100 books including the award winning series "The NASA Mission Reports". Robert has appeared on dozens of radio and television programs in Canada, the USA and England as an expert on, not only music, but also space exploration. His books have been discussed on CNN, the CBC, the BBC and CBS 60 Minutes. He produced the first ever virtual reality panoramas of the Apollo lunar surface photography and the first multi-camera angle movie of the Apollo 11 moonwalk. His last book "New Horizons" expanded on that previous ground-breaking work.

3 October 1962 - 'Sigma 7 - Mercury Atlas 8'. This flightof six orbits by Astronaut Walter M Schirra coveredapproximately 160,000 miles and reached an apogeealtitude of 152.8 nautical miles and a perigee of 86.9nautical miles. The nine hour and 13 minute mission wasterminated in the Pacific by a pinpoint landing in thecenter of the prime recovery area approximately 270statute miles North East of Midway. The test of man'scapabilities in space environment and the engineeringconcepts of the spacecraft and supporting systems wascompletely successful.

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