Glenn was soaring over the North American continent. There was not a cloud anywhere. From Glenn’s ringside seat in the sky, he could see the Mississippi River, New Orleans, and Georgia pass beneath him. Far below, Florida looked as perfect as a map.
It was three hours and eleven minutes after launch, and Glenn was starting his third orbit. Due to the problems with automatic pilot, his seven orbits had been cut back to three. Already it was time to think about reentering the atmosphere.
From the Bermuda station, Gus Grissom recommended that Glenn use the automatic control system for reentry and back it up with manual control. Glenn pointed out that he’d had a lot of trouble with automatic control. It was going wrong in pitch, roll, and yaw. Maybe, he suggested, he better wait to make that decision.
Over Muchea, he joked with Gordo Cooper about getting his extra flight pay from the Marine Corps that month. “I want you to send a message to the commandant, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington,” he told Gordo. “Tell him I have my four hours required flight time in for the month and request flight chit be established for me. Over.”
“Roger,” said Cooper. “Is this flying time or rocket time?”
“Lighter than air,” Glenn answered. As long as he was off the ground, the Marine Corps owed him!
Back at the Cape, a tense debate was going on. Should they tell Glenn about the heat shield warning light? There was really nothing he could do about the problem, and they did not want him worried. They decided to work on it on the ground and not bother him. They could, however, ask him to check his instruments.
Glenn did not have a heat shield indicator. But he did have a landing bag switch. The heat shield was attached to the landing bag. Both were designed to deploy after the capsule had descended through the atmosphere. Cape decided to keep asking him about the landing bag.
The Hawaii capcom informed Glenn that at Mission Control they had been reading an indication of a landing bag deploy. He asked Glenn to put the landing bag switch in auto position to see if he got a light.
Glenn was suspicious. What was it they were asking him to do? If he switched to automatic and the green light came on, it would mean that the landing bag—and the heat shield—had deployed, or been let out. And if it hadn’t deployed—switching to automatic might activate it!
He was taking a chance, he knew. Still, they must know what they were doing. He rapidly switched the switch on and off. No green light. Whew. Everything was okay, then.
Back at Mission Control they still weren’t so sure. There was only one thing they could do—ask him to keep the retropack in place.
In order to leave orbit and reenter the atmosphere, the capsule had to reduce speed. To slow it down, retrorockets on the blunt end would fire and push the capsule backwards. The rockets were held against the heat shield by heavy metal straps called the retropack. Ordinarily, to lighten the load, the retropack would be jettisoned after the rockets were fired. But if it stayed on, it might just help keep the heat shield in place, too.
Wally Schirra, in California, gave Glenn the order. “John, leave your retropack on through your pass over Texas.”
Glenn still didn’t get it. There was something they weren’t telling him, and it was starting to annoy him. But this was no time to get angry. He was beginning the most crucial part of the mission—reentry. He had to enter the atmosphere at just the right angle. If he didn’t, the capsule might bounce back into space and continue to orbit while Glenn ran out of oxygen. Or it might speed through the atmosphere too quickly and burn up. Either way, Glenn would be doomed.
He tried the automatic controls once more. For once, they seemed to work, at least in pitch and roll. The yaw was still off, so he kept one hand on the manual control. His other hand hovered over the retro-rocket switch.
Schirra started the countdown for firing the retro-rockets. “Five . . . four . . . three . . .”
Glenn adjusted the yaw.
“Three . . . two . . . one, fire!”
The three rockets fired one after the other, five seconds apart. With each explosion, Glenn felt the capsule jerk backward.
“I feel like I’m going back to Hawaii,” he told Schirra.
“Don’t do that,” Wally joked. “You want to go to the East Coast.”
The capsule sped on, slower now, moving east over the Rocky Mountains. Texas capcom came on and directed Glenn to leave his retropack on.
Now Glenn was really angry. He was the pilot of this craft, and they were keeping vital information from him. “What is the reason for this?” he barked. “Do you have any reason?”
“Not at this time,” Texas capcom said. He told Glenn that he would have to wait to speak to Mission Control.
It was up to Alan Shepard to tell him, twenty seconds later. “We are not sure whether or not your landing bag has been deployed. We feel it is possible to reenter with the retropackage on.”
“Roger, understand,” Glenn said.
That was an understatement. Finally he knew what they were so worried about. If he had to keep the retropack on, it must be to protect the heat shield. If the heat shield came off, he would burn up. It was that simple.
It was four hours and forty-one minutes after launch, fourteen minutes until Friendship 7 was scheduled to splash down in the Atlantic Ocean. He had entered the upper reaches of the atmosphere. “Going to fly-by-wire again,” he announced. He didn’t want to take any chances with the faulty automatic system.
“We recommend that you . . .” Shepard said. His voice cut out. Glenn was in a communications blackout. The cocoon of heat outside the capsule would keep any transmission from getting through. For the next five minutes, during the most dangerous part of his voyage, he was on his own.
This was it, then. The astronaut heard a thump outside. “I think the pack just let go,” he said to no one in particular.
The heat began to build up. Just four feet behind his back, the temperature rose to 9,500 degrees, just a little less hot than the surface of the sun. The glow outside the window was a bright orange. His back began to stiffen. If the heat shield was down, that was where he would feel the heat first.
He kept trying to contact the Mission Control. “Hello, Cape. Friendship Seven. Over. Hello, Cape. Friendship Seven . . .”
Silence.
Down at Mission Control, the atmosphere was tense. They had no idea whether the heat shield was up—and no way to find out.
In Arlington, Annie kept her gaze fastened on the three TVs in her living room. The Cape had phoned her to let her know there might be a problem. Now she waited.
And the world waited.
Glenn could see flaming pieces of metal fly past the window. Could that be the heat shield tearing apart? Or was it just part of the retropack?
The seconds ticked by. He waited for the first stab of heat in his back . . .
And waited.
It never came. Outside, the red glow began to dim.
He was safe!
“A real fireball outside,” Glenn said in relief.
Then the G forces began to build up, as expected, and the astronaut felt the familiar pressure thrusting him back against the seat. Now he was experiencing 7 Gs . . . 7½ Gs . . .
The headset sputtered and a voice came in. “. . . how do you read? Over.”
“Loud and clear,” Glenn replied.
The team at Mission Control went wild with joy. The heat shield had not burned up after all. Glenn was alive and shooting through the atmosphere, on his way to an ocean landing.
The orange-and-white parachute came out above the capsule at ten thousand feet. A few minutes later, Friendship 7 hit the water. Astronaut John Glenn was home.
Later, after Glenn and his spacecraft were recovered, he filled out a standard NASA form about his experiences. “Was there any unusual activity during this period?” the last question on the form asked.
“No,” he wrote. “Just the normal day in space.”