Fattening the Record books

Fattening the Record Book

Before it blasted off from Cape Kennedy last week, the two-man spacecraft Gemini 10 faced a flight plan that was easily the most complex and ambitious ever designed for U.S. astronauts. By the time they splashed into the Atlantic after three days in orbit, Gemini's crew had collected an impressive variety of space-age records. With one after an other intricate exercise, Command Pilot John Young and his colleague, Michael Collins, wrote bright new chapters into the record book of space travel.

Gemini 10 became the first spaceship ever to use the fuel and propulsion system of another craft to power its own flight; it demonstrated the feasibility of refueling in space, a technique that promises to be a vital part of interplanetary travel to Mars and beyond. Gemini was also the first spacecraft to rendezvous with two different vehicles on the same flight. It flew higher than any previous manned spacecraft and Astronaut Mike Collins, at 35, became the first man to work outside, his ship twice during the same mission. All of which places the U.S. far ahead of Russia in almost every area of manned in space flight. rendezvous and With their docking while singular aloft skills--which the Russians have not yet begun to try--U.S. spacemen moved closer than ever to the moon.

Ominous Shortage. Using the knowledge of orbital mechanics that had been refined during earlier Gemini missions, Young and Collins gradually maneuvered toward a rendezvous with the Agena 10 target vehicle that had been placed in orbit with a precise launch just 100 minutes before their own blastoff. They established radar contact with the Agena 10 during their second revolution, finally sighted the target some 50 miles ahead and 17 miles above. After rising to meet the Agena and nudging Gemini's nose into the Agena's receiving collar, Young coupled the two ships.

Though the rendezvous and docking seemed almost routine, Houston controllers were shocked when Young reported that Gemini had only 380 lbs. of fuel left, about 36% of its original supply. Somehow the catch-up maneuvers during the last 25 minutes before rendezvous had consumed almost 260 lbs. more than expected.

Ominous though it was, Gemini's sudden fuel shortage provided Agena with an added opportunity to demonstrate that one spacecraft can use another's propulsion and control systems. On orders from Houston, the astronauts shut down Gemini's thrusters; for the remainder of the coupled flight, they used only Agena's power for both attitude and major orbital maneuvers, drawing on Agena's 3,348 lbs. of remaining propellant. One brief burst from Agena's big, 16,000-lb.-thrust engine added 280 m.p.h. to Gemini-Agena's velocity. "When that baby lights, there's no doubt about it," gasped Young.

Atlantic Anomaly. Boosted by the Agena's thrust, the Gemini-Agena combination reached a maximum height of 476 miles, carrying Astronauts Young and Collins to the highest altitude ever reached by man--well above the 354-mile record set by Russian Cosmonauts Aleksei Leonov and Pavel Belyayev during the 1965 flight of Voskhod II. In its lofty elliptical orbit, Gemini-Agena passed several times through the "South Atlantic Anomaly," an area where the lower portion of the Van Allen radiation belt dips to within a few hundred miles of the earth. Though the astronauts were exposed to radiation, it was only one-twentieth the strength that NASA scientists had expected and well within safe limits.

The high, far-flung orbit also placed the coupled craft in position to begin a rendezvous with a second target: Agena 8, lifeless but still riding on a nearly circular orbit after its role in the aborted Gemini 8 mission four months earlier. At first, last week's Gemini-Agena was 3,220 miles ahead of Agena 8; during the next several hours, the dead target ship--revolving around the earth every 99 minutes, compared to 101 minutes for Gemini-Agena--slowly passed the sleeping astronauts.

After they had awakened, Young and Collins swung their craft into position and burned Agena's large thruster for eleven seconds. Again the astronauts felt the kick of the big engine. "It may be only one g.," said Young, "but it's the biggest one g. we ever saw." Because the thrust was against the direction of flight, it had a braking effect, reducing Gemini-Agena's velocity and cutting the apogee of its orbit from 476 to 245 miles. A final maneuver placed the astronauts in a 240-mile circular orbit slightly inside the path of Agena 8, now 1,245 miles ahead.

Ultraviolet Photography. While they waited to catch up, Young and Collins turned to their scheduled EVA (extravehicular activity). After securing their helmet face plates, they switched to their space-suit oxygen systems, and depressurized Gemini's cabin. Then Astronaut Collins swung open his hatch and stood up, sticking out into space from his waist up.

Using a camera loaded with ultraviolet-sensitive film, he shot spectrograms of several stars. Because ultraviolet is largely absorbed by the earth's atmosphere, the spectrograms could give astronomers a good look at the stars' composition and behavior and provide added information about their origin. As Gemini-Agena passed into daylight, Collins mounted a plate marked with colored patches of red, yellow, blue and grey, shot a series of test pictures that should help determine how the conditions of space affect color photography.

Shortly after hooking up his space-suit oxygen system, Astronaut Young had noticed acrid, ammonia-like fumes that made his eyes water, but he had not reported the problem immediately. "I figured I'd be called a sissy," he explained later. After ten minutes, though, the eyes of both astronauts were watering badly and swelling, making it difficult to see. Finally, Command Pilot Young ordered Collins to sit down and close his hatch, cutting short his scheduled experiments. Once the cabin was repressurized, the fumes were dissipated by a high-flow oxygen system. They had probably been generated by granulated lithium hydroxide, a chemical used to absorb carbon dioxide and other impurities exhaled by the astronauts, which had somehow found its way into the space-suit breathing lines.

To prepare for rendezvous with Agena 8, the astronauts ended Gemini's 38-hour union with Agena 10 by un-docking. On its own again, Gemini fired its thrusters to maneuver closer to Agena 8. Because the target vehicle's transponder had long since died, the astronauts could not use their on-board radar to calculate closing distances and speeds. Instead, they made their calculations with the aid of a reticle, a sighting device that projects a bull's-eye onto the command pilot's window. "See anything of Agena 8?" asked an anxious ground controller after several minutes of radio silence. "Yeah," replied Young coolly, "we are about seven or eight hundred feet out." "Fantastic," said Houston. "I don't believe it myself," agreed Young. It was the first space rendezvous accomplished without the use of on-board radar.

Snake House. After rendezvous with Agena 8, Young backed off about five feet to begin the last major Gemini 10 assignment: Astronaut Collins' walk in space. Carrying a hand-held nitrogen jet gun and connected to Gemini by a 50-ft. umbilical cord, he eased his way to Agena 8. From its hull, he detached an instrument that had recorded micrometeorite impacts during Agena's four months in orbit. Brought safely back to earth, the recorder will give scientists important new information about micrometeorite density in space. As Collins tugged on his umbilical to return to Gemini, a 70-mm. camera attached to his space suit somehow came loose and floated off into space.

After half an hour of EVA, Collins was suddenly ordered to end his space walk and return to Gemini. Controllers in Houston had noted that Young had reduced Gemini's fuel to an uncomfortably low level in stabilizing the craft each time Collins rocked it by climbing around the hull and by pulling on his umbilical cord. Inside Gemini again, the astronauts found themselves deluged by pieces of floating equipment used during the flight. "Say," complained Collins, "this place makes the snake house at the zoo look like a Sunday-school picnic."

An hour later, after a thorough housecleaning, Collins opened his hatch again, this time to dispose of more than a dozen troublesome items--most of them crammed into a large nylon bag. The Gemini refuse, including the umbilical cord and space-maneuvering gun, will circle the earth in a gradually decaying orbit and finally burn up iu the earth's atmosphere.

Once everything on board was squared away, with the same precision that marked its launch, the spacecraft splashed down in the Atlantic, less than three miles off target and within sight of the recovery ship Guadalcanal. Lifted to the ship's deck by a rescue helicopter, Young and Collins were greeted by cheering sailors and a band playing It's a Small, Small World. For U.S. astronauts, it is a universe that is rapidly expanding.

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