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Liberty Bell 7 Ready for Public Debut
By Irene Brown
Cape Canaveral Bureau Chief
posted: 10:53 am ET
08 September 1999
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Liberty Bell 7 ready for public debutA small spaceship lost at sea for 38 years is scheduled to make its public debut Thursday at a Kansas museum paying for the crafts restoration. The Liberty Bell 7, which sank after a 15-minute suborbital spaceflight in 1961, was retrieved from the ocean floor in July during a 17-day expedition sponsored by the Discovery Channel. The capsule, flown by Mercury 7 astronaut Gus Grissom, was lost after its hatch blew off prematurely, allowing the spacecraft to fill with water. Grissom narrowly escaped drowning. The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, located in Hutchinson, Kansas, plans to clean and restore the Mercury capsule, which will be put on tour by the Discovery Channel for three years, then returned to the museum for permanent display. The restoration area has been turned into a public exhibit where visitors can watch technicians work on the spaceship. The restoration is expected to take about six months.
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