AS-102 (also designated SA-7) was the seventh flight of the

Saturn I The Saturn I was a rocket designed as the United States' first medium lift launch vehicle for up to low Earth orbit payloads.Terminology has changed since the 1960s; back then, 20,000 pounds was considered "heavy lift". The rocket's first sta ...

launch vehicle, which carried the boilerplate

Apollo spacecraft The Apollo spacecraft was composed of three parts designed to accomplish the American Apollo program's goal of landing astronauts on the Moon by the end of the 1960s and returning them safely to Earth. The expendable (single-use) spacecraft ...

BP-15 into

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...

.NSSDC: ''SA-7''
/ref> The test took place on September 18, 1964, lasting for five orbits (about seven and a half hours). The spacecraft and its upper stage completed 59 orbits before reentering the atmosphere and crashing in the Indian Ocean on September 22, 1964.

Objectives

AS-102 was designed to repeat the flight of

AS-101 AS-101 (also designated SA-6) was the sixth flight of the Saturn I launch vehicle, which carried the first boilerplate Apollo spacecraft into low Earth orbit. The test took place on May 28, 1964, lasting for four orbits (about six hours). The s ...

. It would once again carry a boilerplate 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 sh ...

. The only difference from Boilerplate 13 carried on AS-101 was that on Boilerplate 15, one of the simulated reaction control system thruster quads (attitude control thrusters) was instrumented to record launch temperatures and vibrations. Another major difference on AS-102 was that the

launch escape system A launch escape system (LES) or launch abort system (LAS) is a crew-safety system connected to a space capsule that can be used to quickly separate the capsule from its launch vehicle in case of an emergency requiring the abort of the launch, suc ...

(LES) tower would be jettisoned using the launch escape and pitch control motors. AS-102 was the first time a Saturn rocket carried a programmable guidance computer. Previous launches had used an onboard "black box" that was preprogrammed. On AS-102 it would be possible to reprogram the computer during flight so that any anomalous behavior could potentially be corrected. Apollo sa-7

Flight

In early July, a small crack in engine number six was found. This meant removing the engine, the first time that the ground crew had to do this with a Saturn rocket. It was then decided to return all eight engines to the manufacturer, which meant a job that would take about ten hours because of the large number of tubes, hoses and wires that connected each engine to the rocket. The replacement delayed the launch by about two weeks, followed by another delay of several days because of Hurricanes

Cleo Cleo may refer to: Entertainment * ''Cleo'' (magazine), an Australian magazine established in 1972, now active in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand * Cleo (group), a South Korean girl group formed in 1999 * ''Cleo'' (play), by Lawren ...

and Dora. Launch was on 18 September from

Cape Kennedy , image = cape canaveral.jpg , image_size = 300 , caption = View of Cape Canaveral from space in 1991 , map = Florida#USA , map_width = 300 , type =Cape , map_caption = Location in Florida , location ...

, Florida just before noon local time. The first stage burned for 147.7 seconds, with separation 0.8 seconds later. The second stage ignited 1.7 seconds later, and the LES jettisoned at 160.2 seconds after launch. It burned until +621.1 seconds with the stage and boilerplate in a 212.66 by 226.50 km orbit. The flight met all its objectives. The spacecraft continued to transmit telemetry for five orbits and was tracked until re-entry on its 59th orbit over the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by t ...

. The only anomalous event on the flight was the failure to recover the eight film-camera pods. They had landed downrange of the expected area, where Hurricane Gladys ruled out a continued search. However, two of the pods did wash ashore two months later. The pods were covered with barnacles, but the film inside was undamaged.

References

External links

The Apollo Spacecraft: A ChronologyNASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive
*http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/history/apollo/sa-7/sa-7.html

{{Use American English, date=January 2014 Apollo program Spacecraft launched in 1964 Spacecraft which reentered in 1964 Test spaceflights Spacecraft launched by Saturn rockets