New app launches iPads on John Glenn's 'Friendship 7' 50 years laterWant to experience what it was like 50 years ago to be inside NASA's Mercury mission control center monitoring astronaut John Glenn as he became the first American to orbit the Earth? There's an app for that.
Spacecraft Films, which for more than a decade has been restoring mission footage for DVD and Blu-ray distribution, launched their first Apple iPad app on Monday (Feb. 13), a week before the 50th anniversary of John Glenn's historic mission. "Friendship 7: The Voyage of Mercury-Atlas 6" gives users a seat in mission control for a multimedia-rich playback of the Feb. 20, 1962 flight.
"Fifty years ago John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth," Mark Gray, Spacecraft Films' producer, writes in the text accompanying the app in Apple's store. "Relive his three-orbit mission with exclusive access to over 4 hours of rare video, plus the complete audio from the onboard recorder and flight director's loop recorded in mission control."
The app, which requires Apple iOS 5.0 or later and a Wifi connection for watching the streaming videos, is available for download for $6.99.