Sunken space capsule starts museum tour

The capsule will spend three years on tour

The Liberty Bell 7 space capsule, pulled up from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean last summer, has gone on display at Nasa's Kennedy Space Center.

Liberty Bell 7 found off Great Abaco Island

The capsule sank 480 kilometres (300 miles) east of Cape Canaveral on its return from a successful 15-minute suborbital flight on 21 July, 1961. It was only the second manned US space shot.

The hatch blew off prematurely, nearly drowning astronaut Virgil "Gus" Grissom. He was pulled clear but the helicopter sent in to retrieve the capsule had to abandon the craft to the sea as it filled with water and became too heavy.

The Liberty Bell 7 was salvaged from the ocean floor in an expedition sponsored by the Discovery Channel.

Original equipment

The capsule will spend the next three years touring US cities. Sealed in a clear acrylic box for protection, Liberty Bell 7 is displayed so people can peer into the hole where the hatch once was.

The exhibition takes visitors on a virtual ride with US Air Force Captain Gus Grissom 190 kilometres (118 miles) into space and then five kilometres (3 miles) below the ocean's surface where the capsule eventually came to rest 39 years ago.

Some aluminium fittings had to be replaced

The exhibition shows how astronauts were trained in the early 1960s and details the recovery and restoration programme led by Curt Newport.

Almost everything inside the capsule is original: the rows of switches, bundles of cables, seat straps, folded-up parachute, orange flashlight, red fluorescent light.

The restorers at the Smithsonian-affiliated Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center had to put in a new light bulb. They also had to refashion the handle of Grissom's control stick; the original, made of aluminium, was corroded away by salt.

Tattered certificate

The display includes six of the 52 Mercury dimes and one of the five $1 silver certificates that were stashed into the capsule by launch pad workers. Grissom's autograph is visible on the tattered certificate.

The one item not on display is the capsule hatch. That remains lost on the ocean floor together with the definitive explanation for why it came off too soon.

The hatch was never recovered

Gus Grissom denied until his death in the 1967 Apollo launch pad fire that he did anything wrong, and Nasa has agreed with him. But there were rumours that he panicked and may have tried to get out fast.

"Even if we had found the hatch, I don't think we could have come to any conclusion,'' said Max Ary, president of the Kansas Cosmosphere. "But knowing that's still out there still maintains that mystery.''

The Kansas Cosmosphere has been examining the possibility that the explosive-rigged bolts on the convex hatch could have popped early because of the way the capsule hit the water.

Lowell Grissom, brother of astronaut Gus Grissom, stands in front of the capsule