A102

A102, A.102 or A-102 may refer to :

AS-102 (spacecraft)

AS-102 (also designated SA-7) was the seventh flight of the Saturn I launch vehicle, which carried the boilerplate Apollo spacecraft BP-15 into low Earth orbit. The test took place on September 18, 1964, lasting for five orbits (about seven and a half hours). The spacecraft and its upper stage completed 59 orbits before reentering the atmosphere and crashing in the Indian Ocean on September 22, 1964.

Objectives

AS-102 was designed to repeat the flight of AS-101. It would once again carry a boilerplate Apollo Command and Service Module. The only difference from Boilerplate 13 carried on AS-101 was that on Boilerplate 15, one of the simulated Reaction Control System thruster quads (attitude control thrusters) was instrumented to record launch temperatures and vibrations. Another major difference on AS-102 was that the Launch Escape System (LES) tower would be jettisoned using the launch escape and pitch control motors. The mission used Apollo boilerplate BP-15.

AS-102 was the first time a Saturn rocket carried a programmable guidance computer. Previous launches had used an onboard "black box" that was preprogrammed. On AS-102 it would be possible to reprogram the computer during flight so that any anomalous behavior could potentially be corrected.