Jul 20 1999
From The Space Library
The salvage team lifted astronaut Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom's Mercury capsule to the surface of the Atlantic Ocean just one day before the 38th anniversary of the astronaut's historic suborbital flight. The second American in space, Grissom had flown in his Liberty Bell 7 Mercury capsule on 21 July 1961. After its ocean landing, the capsule's hatch had blown open prematurely, nearly drowning him. Both the location of the capsule and the cause of the accident had remained a mystery until 1 May 1999, when a salvage team led by Curt Newport and funded by the Discovery Channel had discovered the spacecraft 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) beneath the ocean. Even after the team had retrieved the capsule, the cause of the accident remained a mystery. The salvage team had yet to locate the capsule's hatch, which Newport believed had the greatest potential for determining what had caused the malfunction at the end of Grissom's flight.
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