Mercury Atlas 9Spacecraft:S/C-20 Launch Vehicle: Atlas 130-D Launched: 15 May 1963 |
Prime Crew |
Description: 1st Mercury Atlas manned extended orbital |
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L G Cooper 
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Backup Crew |
A B Shepard
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| Duration: 1.43 days
Decay Date: 1963-05-16
USAF Sat Cat: 576
COSPAR: 1963-015A
Apogee: 265 km (164 mi)
Perigee: 163 km (101 mi)
Inclination: 32.5000 deg
Period: 88.70 min
On July 27, 1961 NASA met with McDonnell engineers to discuss modification of the Mercury spacecraft for Project MODM (Manned One-Day Mission). On October 25, 1961 NASA authorized McDonnell to proceed with the modification of four capsules and associated testing to support four manned MODM flights beginning in late 1962 and finishing by the end of 1963. From then until April 1962 NASA's Mercury program plan included four one-day flights in 1963: MA-10 through MA-13. But by October 1962 the decision was taken to cancel the last short-duration flight and move directly to the one-day flights. Therefore Cooper's MA-9 flight switched capsules from the short duration SC19 to the long-duration SC20. Mercury Atlas 9 turned out to be the only flight of the planned MODM series of four. The other three were successively canceled as delays developed in the launch schedule for short-duration missions and budget pressures built up in the Gemini program, requiring the reallocation of funding from the Mercury program. Also, although Cooper managed spacecraft consumables so well during his mission that they would have lasted two more days, nearly every system was experiencing faults by the end of 22 orbits, leading engineers to doubt the wisdom of pushing the Mercury design on even longer missions. References:
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