Astronaut Scientific Debriefings, 1962-1963

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55
Nordberg - I am curious if you ha<l a chance to observe variations
of brightness around the horizon; around as far as possible
(during) both in day and nighto
Schirra - Again, the field of view isn't that big o
I know just
what you are asking faro
I didn ' t take the liberty of making
these, what would amount toi large yaw changes.
I did not have
the opportunity to observe that transition.
The field of view I
had did not show these various changes .
O'Keefe - You see, this is like 30 degrees, that's half a radius. I don't
t hink
he could see much more than you could see overhe ad at ni ght.
Schirra - Yes.
ovKeefe - It means that if he doesn't see patterns in the airglow
from a single place at night, unless he has the freedom to yaw al l
around, he doesn't have the opportunity of tracing out the rather
large patterns which must be in the airglow.
They are of the orde r of
a thousand miles in diameter .
Nordberg - I was also curious about daytime, because of the
forward scattering and backscattering and 90° to the sun and
actually, in daytime if your turnaround maneuvers arep s ay , t hey
don 9 t go around in a plane tangential to the surface of the earth ?
They go around in a radial plane, don 9 t they?
Schirra - Well, this is the awful thing about our vehicle.
All
the thrusters are not aligned through the body axis, thereforep
you get two and three axes when you ask for one.
If you were
trying to track the horizon, using the yaw input, say the horizon
being like an arc here, you go like this.
Then you ' ve got to roll p