Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Pad Abort Test-1 (Apollo)
Pad Abort Test 1 was the first abort test of the Apollo spacecraft.
| Mission Insignia | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Mission Statistics | |
| Mission Name: | Pad Abort Test 1 |
| Call Sign: | PA-1 |
| Launch: | November 7, 1963 16:00:01 UTC White Sands Missile Range Area 3 |
| Landing: | November 7, 1963 16:02:45 UTC |
| Duration: | 2 min 45.1 s |
| Number of Orbits: | Suborbital |
| Apogee: | 1.75 mi - 2.82 km |
| Distance Traveled: | 1.56 mi - 2.51 km |
| PA-1 | |
Objectives
Pad Abort Test 1 was a mission to investigate the effects on the Apollo spacecraft during an abort from the pad. The launch escape system (LES) had to be capable of pulling the spacecraft away from a possibly exploding rocket while it sat it on the pad. It then had to be able to gain enough altitude to allow the parachutes to open and preferably have the spacecraft over water where the Apollo spacecraft was designed to land.
The flight featured a production model LES and a boilerplate (BP-6) Apollo spacecraft, the first mission to feature one. Inside the spacecraft there were no measuring instruments for structural loads as these measurements would be of little use seeing that the boilerplate did not fully represent a real spacecraft.
Flight
An abort signal was sent to the LES at 09:00:01 local time. This initiated a sequence where the main solid rockets fired to move the spacecraft craft and smaller attitude rockets fired so that the spacecraft moved laterally (at Cape Canaveral this lateral movement would be towards the ocean).
The LES separated after fifteen seconds with the spacecraft now on a ballistic trajectory. The parachute system worked perfectly with the drogue chute stabilizing the spacecraft, followed by the three main parachutes that slowed the descent to a leisurely 26 kilometres per hour
The only problems found in the whole flight were that the LES rockets had left a soot deposit on the spacecraft exterior, and that the stability of the spacecraft was less than predicted.
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