Introduction
Embark on a journey back in time to the era of space exploration’s most remarkable achievements with our deep dive into the Apollo 7 mission. This mission, the first crewed venture of NASA’s Apollo program, marked a significant turning point in our quest to conquer the cosmos.
From the brave astronauts who dared to venture into the unknown to the groundbreaking technology tested for the first time and the challenges faced and overcome, this article uncovers the riveting story behind Apollo 7.
Join us as we explore the mission that set the stage for mankind’s first steps on the moon and forever changed the course of history.
As Apollo 7 was the first manned mission in the Apollo program, it set the stage for the integration of complex systems like the Apollo Guidance Computer, which became instrumental in later lunar missions.
Historical Milestones: The Launch of Apollo 7 and Its Groundbreaking Achievements
With Apollo 7, NASA launched the first crewed Apollo mission into space. The goal was to test the latest spaceship tech and ensure humans could survive their long trip to the Moon.
The Apollo 7 expedition also marked the first 3-person American space crew and the first to broadcast a live television feed.
The stakes were already high. When Apollo 7 launched on October 11, 1968. It was the first time the agency sent astronauts into space since a cabin fire had killed the Apollo 1 crew some 21 months earlier.
Apollo 7 Crew
- Commander: Walter M. Schirra – His third and last spaceflight.
- Command Module Pilot: Donn F. Eisele – His single spaceflight.
- Lunar Module Pilot: R. Walter Cunningham – His single spaceflight.
Walter Schirra was shaken by his friend’s death and neighbor astronaut Gus Grissom in the Apollo 1 fire.
Commander Schirra was a 45-year-old former Gemini astronaut and a Navy test pilot. Walter had already decided to leave the agency when he was selected for the Apollo 7 mission.
The safety of his crew was his prime concern. It outweighed nearly all other tasks that NASA planned for the Apollo 7 flight, according to Andrew Chaikin, a NASA historian and author of the book A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of The Apollo Astronauts.
Walter came down with a severe head cold about 15 hours into the flight, with the rest of the crew soon joining him.
Command Module Pilot Donn Fulton Eisele was a United States Air Force test pilot officer. After retiring from NASA and the Air Force, he became Thailand’s Peace Corps country director before moving into private business.
Lunar Module Pilot Ronnie Walter Cunningham. He was the agency’s third civilian astronaut (after Neil Armstrong and Elliot See) and has been a fighter pilot and a physicist.
Mission
The mission should demonstrate the Command and Service Module (CSM) with crew performance.
And also demonstrate mission support facilities performance during a human-crewed mission and demonstrate Apollo rendezvous capability. Finally, they should show live TV broadcasts from space.
The Launch
October 11, 1968, was a hot day at Cape Canaveral, but a nice breeze tempered the Florida heat when Apollo 7 blasted off from Launch Complex 34 in a blaze of orange-colored flames.
The Saturn IB rocket—Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walt Cunningham—produced a perfect launch in its first trial launch with astronauts aboard.
Once the rocket cleared the launch pad, a three-shift mission control team in Houston—led by flight directors Gene Kranz, Glynn Lunney, and Gerry Griffin—took over.
Credit: NASA.
Apollo 7 Mission Objective Overview
Saturn’s first stage separated more than two minutes later, allowing the second stage, S-IVB, to take over instantly.
Commander Schirra reported, “She is riding like a dream.” Apollo 7 completed an elliptical orbit of 140 -by -183 miles above Earth just over ten minutes after launch.
The S-IVB (the third stage on the Saturn V) remained attached to the command and service module for about one-and-a-half orbits until separation.
Commander Walter fired the CSM’s small rockets to pull 50 feet ahead of the S-IVB; later, he turned the spacecraft around to simulate rendezvous and docking, as would be necessary to extract a Lunar Module (LM) for future lunar landings.
Interested in learning more about the technology that made these missions possible? Check out our article on 10 Fascinating Facts About Lunar Modules You Need to Know.
Lunar Module Pilot Walter Cunningham informed the Spacecraft that Lunar Module Adapter panels had not ultimately deployed.
The following day, when the command and service module and the S-IVB were around 80 miles apart, commander Walter and his crewmates sought out the lifeless 59-foot craft in a rendezvous simulation and approached within 70 feet. This included the first two burns of the Service Propulsion System.
This naturally reminded Thomas Stafford, the mission’s capsule communicator, or capcom, of the “angry alligator” Agena target vehicle he had met on his Gemini 9 mission.
This misfortune would have been problematic on a mission that carried a Lunar Module, but the panels would be jettisoned explosively on later missions.
Credit: NASA.
Commander Walet Schirra caught a bad cold.
The systems were operating normally, yet the crew experienced some physical distress. Approximately 15 hours into the flight, Walter Schirra caught a bad cold, and Cunningham and Eisele soon followed suit.
A cold is annoying enough on the ground, although, in weightlessness, it’s a different problem. The mucus accumulates, fills the nasal passages, and does not drain from the head.
The only relief is to blow quite hard, which is unpleasant to the eardrums. The Apollo 7 crew had no choice but to endure their symptoms with the help of decongestants and aspirin.
Apollo 7 saw the first live TV broadcast.
Apollo 7 saw the first live TV broadcast of Americans from space but allowed it to be a source of serious debate in NASA councils.
The choice to carry a 4.5-pound video camera was made just before the flight, and the astronauts held the first of seven TV broadcasts on Flight Day 4. Although those early pictures were crude, they served as informative moments for the public.
The Service Module engine performance was a joy. At critical times during a lunar voyage, the engine had to work or not get back home.
On Apollo 7, all eight firing attempts were nearly perfect. On the first attempt, the astronauts had a real surprise.
In contrast to Saturn’s smooth liftoff, the blast from the Service Module engine jolted the crew, causing commander Schirra to yell, “Yabadabadoo!” like Fred’s cartoon figure Flintstone.
Later, Donn said, “We didn’t quite know what to expect, but we got more than we expected,” adding that it felt like being cemented into our seats.
The Apollo 7 command and service module worked superbly
The Apollo 7 command and service module worked superbly. The spacecraft operated nominally for nearly 11 days—longer than a Moon journey and back to Earth. With some exceptions, the other systems in the spacecraft performed as they should.
Occasionally, one of the three fuel cells providing electricity to the craft developed some undesired high temperatures, but load-sharing connections among the cells prevented any power shortage.
The Apollo 7 crew complained about loud fans in the environmental circuits and shut off two. The capsule cabin stayed comfortable, although the coolant lines sweated and water accumulated in tiny puddles on the deck, something Apollo astronaut Joe Kerwin had seen during a training in one of NASA’s altitude chambers.
Commander Schirra and the rest of the crew vacuumed the water into space utilizing the urine dump pipe.
Visibility from the spacecraft windows varied.
Visibility from the spacecraft windows varied from poor to good during the Apollo 7 mission. Three of the spacecraft windows fogged because of improperly cured sealant compounds. It was not fixed until Apollo 9 mission.
Soon after the launch escape tower was jettisoned; two windows had soot deposits, and two others had water condensation.
Nevertheless, two days later, Walter Cunningham reported that most of the windows were in reasonably good shape, despite moisture accumulating between one of the windows’ inner panes.
Navigation with a telescope and a sextant on each of the 37 preselected Apollo mission stars was challenging if done too soon after a waste-water dump. Even with these minor setbacks, the windows were adequate.
Those utilized for observations during rendezvous and station-keeping with the S-IVB remained relatively clear.
The spacecraft windows were satisfactory.
Sometimes they had to wait many minutes for the frozen particles to scatter. Donn reported that he could not determine what part of the sky he was looking toward unless he could see at least forty or fifty stars at a time.
However, the spacecraft windows were satisfactory for general and landmark observations and photography.
Chargers for the batteries were needed for re-entry after fuel cells departed, with the Service Module returning 50-75 percent less energy than anticipated.
Most dangerous was the possible risk of overheating the fuel cells, which might have failed when the spacecraft was too far away from Earth to return on batteries, even if they were fully charged. Thankfully each of these anomalies was thoroughly tested before Apollo 8 flew.
Apollo 7 returns to Earth
Many days before the mission ended, they began to query about their re-entry suit helmets. The buildup of pressure might rupture their eardrums. How would they blow their noses?
Deke Slayton tried to persuade them to wear the helmets in mission control anyway, but Schirra was adamant about keeping them off. (Ultimately, each crew member took a decongestant pill about an hour before re-entry and descended without incident.)
The command and service module’s service propulsion system, which had to fire the command and service module into and out of the Moon’s orbit on later missions, worked flawlessly throughout eight burns lasting half a second to 67.6 seconds.
The crew of Apollo 7 splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean on October 22, 1968, at 7:11:48 a.m. EDT, southeast of Bermuda, merely over a mile from the planned impact point. The crew was picked up by helicopter and placed on the U.S. Navy’s recovery ship USS Essex.
Apollo 7’s success led to a quick review of Apollo 8’s options.
Apollo 7 achieved what it set out to do – qualifying the command and service module and clearing the proposed lunar orbit mission to follow. Its enterprises were of national interest.
And a special edition of NASA’s news clipping collection termed “Current News” covered front-page stories from 32 major newspapers scattered over the nation’s length and breadth.
Although the post-mission celebrations may not have matched those for the first orbital flight of the American astronaut John Glenn in 1962, enthusiasm was high.
This enthusiasm would build to even greater heights with each Apollo event. Apollo 7’s success led to a quick review of Apollo 8’s options.
The Apollo 7 crew went through six days of debriefing for the benefit of the Apollo 8 mission. On October 28, 1968, the Manned Space Flight Management Council, chaired by George Mueller, NASA Associate Administrator for Human-crewed Space Flight, attended the Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center), reviewing every phase of the future Apollo missions.
The following day I brought a lengthy systems review of the Apollo 8 spacecraft parts. NASA Administrator Thomas Paine made the go/no-go evaluation of lunar orbit on November 11, 1968, at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
If you’re interested in learning more about the Apollo missions that landed on the Moon, please check out our detailed article on this topic.
FAQ
- What was the primary objective of the Apollo 7 mission? The main goal of the Apollo 7 mission was to test the latest spaceship technology and ensure humans could survive their long trip to the Moon. This mission marked the first crewed Apollo mission into space by NASA.
- Who were the crew members of the Apollo 7 mission? The Apollo 7 mission was crewed by Commander Walter M. Schirra, Command Module Pilot Donn F. Eisele, and Lunar Module Pilot R. Walter Cunningham. This mission marked the first 3-person American space crew.
- What were the significant achievements of the Apollo 7 mission? The Apollo 7 mission was notable for several reasons, including the first live TV broadcast from space and the successful testing of the Command and Service Module (CSM) with crew performance. The mission also demonstrated Apollo rendezvous capability.
- What challenges did the Apollo 7 crew face during the mission? The Apollo 7 crew faced several challenges during the mission, including dealing with a severe head cold in space and issues with the spacecraft windows. Despite these challenges, the mission was a success.
- What was the outcome of the Apollo 7 mission? The Apollo 7 mission was a success, achieving its objectives and paving the way for future Apollo missions. The crew splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean on October 22, 1968, and were recovered by the U.S. Navy’s recovery ship USS Essex.