Lost Spacecraft: The Search for Liberty Bell 7
Listen to the interview with Mr. Ary:
About this interview
Curt Newport's Lost Spacecraft: The Search for Liberty Bell 7 is a tale of discipline, exploration and discovery. It is the story of the search for astronaut Gus Grissom's lost 1961 Mercury spacecraft. After a successful sub-orbital flight into space (the second of a planned seven missions) the Liberty Bell 7 suffered a catastrophic malfunction causing the spacecraft to sink to the bottom of the Atlantic in an area known as Blake's Basin. For close to forty years the spacecraft was considered lost and unrecoverable, lying 16,000 feet below the surface. In 1999, Curt Newport and his team were able to locate and recover the spacecraft against overwhelming odds in a race against time and weather. Newport, a veteran of deep sea underwater work, recounts the hardships of working with remote vehicles more than three miles under the surface of the ocean. Along the way, he provides a technical perspective on the design and construction of the Mercury spacecraft as well as a basic history of the United States' first crewed space program.
Max Ary is the Curator of Special Projects at the Stafford Air and Space Museum in Weatherford, OK.
Learn more
- Find Lost Spacecraft: The Search for Liberty Bell 7 at the SWOSU Libraries …
- NASA's summary of the Liberty Bell 7's mission and flight.
- The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center has placed the restored Liberty Bell 7 on display. This page includes a video on the recovered capsule.
- A review of Lost Spacecraft by Larry McGlynn, featuring an interview with Max Ary.
- Part one of NBC News' 1961 coverage of the Liberty Bell 7's flight.
- Part two of NBC News' 1961 coverage of the Liberty Bell 7's flight.
Credits
- Topic: Lost Spacecraft: The Search for Liberty Bell 7 (ISBN: 978-1896522883)
- Author(s)/Performer(s): Curt Newport
- Interviewee: Max Ary
- Interviewer: Frederic Murray
- Recording Engineer: Brandon Schwartz
- Length: 01:20:05 (hh:mm:ss)
- Recorded: December 20, 2011