AS-202 (also referred to as SA-202) was the second uncrewed, suborbital test flight of a production Block I

Apollo command and service module The Apollo command and service module (CSM) was one of two principal components of the United States Apollo spacecraft, used for the Apollo program, which landed astronauts on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. The CSM functioned as a mother ship ...

launched with the

Saturn IB The Saturn IB (also known as the uprated Saturn I) was an American launch vehicle commissioned by the NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for the Apollo program. It uprated the Saturn I by replacing the S-IV second stage (, ...

launch vehicle. It was launched on August 25, 1966, and was the first flight which included the spacecraft guidance, navigation control system and

fuel cell A fuel cell is an electrochemical cell that converts the chemical energy of a fuel (often hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (often oxygen) into electricity through a pair of redox reactions. Fuel cells are different from most batteries in requ ...

s. The success of this flight enabled the Apollo program to judge the Block I spacecraft and Saturn IB ready to carry men into orbit on the next mission, AS-204.

Objectives

AS-202 was the third test flight of the Saturn IB, because a delay in the readiness of the Apollo spacecraft 011 pushed its launch past the July 1966 launch of

AS-203 AS-203 (or SA-203) was an uncrewed flight of the Saturn IB rocket on July 5, 1966. It carried no command and service module, as its purpose was to verify the design of the S-IVB rocket stage restart capability that would later be used in the A ...

. It was designed to test the rocket more than had been done on

AS-201 AS-201 (or SA-201), flown February 26, 1966, was the first uncrewed test flight of an entire production Block I Apollo command and service module and the Saturn IB launch vehicle. The spacecraft consisted of the second Block I command module ...

by launching the rocket higher and having the flight lasting twice as long. It would also test the command and service module (CSM-011) by having the engine fire four times during the flight. The flight was also designed to test the heat shield by subjecting it to 260 megajoules per square meter. Over the course of the reentry it generated equivalent energy needed to power

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

for over one minute in 1966. CSM-011 was basically a production model capable of carrying a crew. However it lacked the crew couches and some displays that would be included on later missions for the astronauts. This was the first flight of the guidance and navigation system as well as the

electrical system.

Flight

AS-202 was launched 25 August 1966 from Pad 34. The launch phase was perfectly nominal with the first stage burning for just under two and a half minutes, lifting the rocket to an altitude of , downrange from the launch pad. The second stage then burned for a further seven and a half minutes, putting the spacecraft into a ballistic trajectory. The CSM was separated from the rocket stage at an altitude of . The CSM was preprogrammed to make four burns of its

service propulsion system The Apollo command and service module (CSM) was one of two principal components of the United States Apollo spacecraft, used for the Apollo program, which landed astronauts on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. The CSM functioned as a mother ship ...

(SPS). The first occurred a couple of seconds after separation from the

S-IVB The S-IVB (pronounced "S-four-B") was the third stage on the Saturn V and second stage on the Saturn IB launch vehicles. Built by the Douglas Aircraft Company, it had one J-2 (rocket engine), J-2 rocket engine. For lunar missions it was fired twi ...

second stage. It burned for 3 minutes, 35 seconds, lifting the spacecraft apogee to , downrange. The second burn was 25 minutes later, lasting one minute 28 seconds. Ten seconds later, two more burns of three seconds each were done to test the rapid restart capabilities of the engine. The command module entered the atmosphere at a speed of . The spacecraft performed a

skip reentry Non-ballistic atmospheric entry is a class of atmospheric entry trajectories that follow a non-ballistic trajectory by employing aerodynamic lift in the high upper atmosphere. It includes trajectories such as skip and glide. Skip is a flight tr ...

, first descending to , then lifting back up to . By this time it had shed of speed. It then continued to descend. The main parachutes deployed at . It splashed down at 16.12° N - 168.9° E, from the target landing site, and the

aircraft carrier An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a ...

took 8 hours and 30 minutes to reach the capsule (SouthEast of

Wake Island Wake Island ( mh, Ānen Kio, translation=island of the kio flower; also known as Wake Atoll) is a coral atoll in the western Pacific Ocean in the northeastern area of the Micronesia subregion, east of Guam, west of Honolulu, southeast of To ...

Museum display

The capsule is currently on display aboard . The ship is open to the public as the USS ''Hornet'' Museum in

Alameda, California Alameda ( ; ; Spanish for "Avenue (landscape), tree-lined path") is a city in Alameda County, California, located in the East Bay (San Francisco Bay Area), East Bay region of the Bay Area. The city is primarily located on Alameda (island), Alam ...

References

External links

Postlaunch report for mission AS-202 (Apollo spacecraft 011) – Oct 1966 NASA (PDF format)

NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive
* Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4204/cover.html * Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4205/cover.html * AS-202 Press Kit: https://web.archive.org/web/20031205112335/http://www.apollosaturn.com/as202/as202con.htm {{Use American English, date=January 2014 Apollo 03 1966 in spaceflight Spacecraft launched by Saturn rockets