Results of the First U.S. Manned Orbital Space Flight

NASA’s official report on John Glenn’s February 20 1962 orbital flight, Friendship 7, presented as a continuation of the information already published on the two 1961 suborbital flights.

Thirteen sections cover operation requirements and plans, spacecraft and spacecraft systems (by Mercury Project Manager Kenneth S. Kleinknecht and Deputy Manager William M. Bland, Jr.), life support and biomedical instrumentation, launch-complex checkout and launch-vehicle systems, spacecraft preparation, flight control, recovery operations, and aeromedical results, followed by astronaut M. Scott Carpenter’s account of Glenn’s preflight preparation, pilot-performance analysis, Glenn’s own pilot’s flight report, and a summary of results by George M. Low.

Four appendixes give the Mercury network performance summary, the full MA-6 air-ground voice communications, Glenn’s own account of his astronomical, meteorological, and terrestrial observations in orbit, and a preliminary space-science report by Goddard’s John A. O’Keefe.