Team to Recover Spacecraft Lost at Sea
The underwater salvage expert who found Gus Grissom’s Mercury capsule at the bottom of the Atlantic two months ago headed back out to sea Thursday to lift the 38-year-old spacecraft from its watery grave.
“It will be a big relief” once the capsule is aboard ship, said Curt Newport. “I’ll feel like the weight of a Mercury capsule’s been taken off my shoulders.”
Newport and his team discovered Liberty Bell 7 on May 1 in 3-mile-deep water about 300 miles southeast of Cape Canaveral. But they were forced to leave it there when the cable to their robotic recovery vessel snapped in rough seas.
It took five weeks for Oceaneering International Inc. to build another recovery vessel. The Houston company also supplied a bigger ship for this trip, which is expected to last 1 1/2 to two weeks.
Newport plans to retrieve the recovery vessel first, then go after Liberty Bell 7, the only U.S. manned spacecraft lost after a successful mission.
The capsule splashed down with Grissom after a 15-minute suborbital flight on July 21, 1961. But the explosive bolts that blow open the hatch detonated prematurely, and the spacecraft filled up with water and sank.
Two bomb experts are going along to deactivate an explosive navigation device that failed to go off when the spacecraft sank.
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