AS-202 (also referred to as SA-202 or Apollo 2) 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), Apollo spacecraft, used for the Apollo program, which landed astronauts on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. The CSM functi ...

launched with the Saturn IB 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 fuel, hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (often oxygen) into electricity through a pair of redox reactions. Fuel cells are different from most bat ...

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 (also known as SA-203 or Apollo 3) 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 l ...

. It was designed to test the rocket more than had been done on AS-201 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, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

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 (SPS). The first occurred a couple of seconds after separation from the S-IVB 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, 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 hangar facilities for supporting, arming, deploying and recovering carrier-based aircraft, shipborne aircraft. Typically it is the ...

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

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Staging footage

AS-202 was one of three uncrewed Apollo missions which obtained notable close-up footage of a Saturn rocket during staging, the others being Apollo 4 and Apollo 6. Ejectable cameras were mounted to each launch vehicle, technology first developed for the Saturn I. On AS-202, a camera was mounted to the Saturn IB vehicle's first stage, the S-IB, looking forward. It captured footage of the vehicle's second stage, the S-IVB (200 series) pulling away and firing its single J-2 engine. The upper stage is identifiable by its firing of three ullage motors; a later iteration of the S-IVB, the 500 series, had only two ullage motors, and was that used on Saturn V launches. Although the footage was captured during an uncrewed flight, it is frequently used as

stock footage Stock footage, and similarly, archive footage, library pictures, and file footage is film or video footage that can be used again in other films. Stock footage is beneficial to filmmakers as it saves shooting new material. A single piece of stock ...

in documentaries of crewed flights, to illustrate staging. The footage was used in the documentary film ''

Apollo 11 Apollo 11 was a spaceflight conducted from July 16 to 24, 1969, by the United States and launched by NASA. It marked the first time that humans Moon landing, landed on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin l ...

'', and is sometimes erroneously attributed to Apollo 11, or other crewed missions.

Museum display

The capsule was displayed in the US Pavilion at

Expo 67 The 1967 International and Universal Exposition, commonly known as Expo 67, was a general exhibition from April 28 to October 29, 1967. It was a category one world's fair held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is considered to be one of the most s ...

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

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. File:USS Hornet Apollo CM.jpg, AS-202 CM-011 exhibited on USS ''Hornet'' File:Apollo Capsule (USS Hornet).jpg, AS-202 CM-011 interior

References

External links

* 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 * {{Use American English, date=January 2014 Apollo 03 1966 in spaceflight Spacecraft launched by Saturn rockets Saturn IB