Intrepid Museum's Astro Live

Join us live on Facebook, YouTube, or X.

The Intrepid Museum will present a Virtual Astro Live program on November 16 at 3pm ET.

On July 21, 1961, NASA astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom became the second American in space when he piloted the Mercury capsule Liberty Bell 7. After a successful suborbital flight and splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean, a prematurely jettisoned hatch caused the capsule to flood and unexpectedly sink, disappearing nearly three miles below the surface. Grissom was rescued (and was later recovered by Intrepid after his Gemini III mission in 1965), but for decades, Liberty Bell 7 remained one of America’s most elusive space artifacts.

In 1999, using modern technology under the direction of deep-sea salvage expert Curt Newport, a specialized team successfully located and raised Liberty Bell 7 from the ocean floor after 38 years. The capsule was restored and is now preserved at the Cosmosphere in Kansas, offering a rare glimpse into the early days of human spaceflight.

Join us for a conversation with Curt Newport about the challenges of deep-ocean recovery, the story of how his team brought Liberty Bell 7 back to the surface, and what this remarkable achievement means for preserving the legacy of America’s first astronauts.

The event is hosted and co-produced by John “Das” Galloway, founder of the Kerbal Space Academy.

Participant:

Curt Newport develops and operates underwater technologies and has worked in commercial and government underwater operations for almost 50 years. He has participated in over 150 deepsea operations around the world, including high-profile expeditions such as the salvage of the Space Shuttle Challenger, TWA 800, the broadcast of live images from the sunken ocean liner RMS Titanic, the search for the Air France 447 Black Boxes, the search for flight MH370, the 2015 SS El Faro investigation, as well as many other classified missions involving the loss of military aircraft and weaponry.

Newport led the expedition to locate and recover Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom’s Liberty Bell 7 Mercury spacecraft, which was discovered on May 30, 1999, and recovered from waters 4,800 meters deep later the same year. The Liberty Bell 7 recovery remains the deepest commercial salvage operation in history. Additionally, Newport found and documented the deepest wooden shipwreck ever discovered (a 19th-century merchant ship lost in deep water) in June of 2001, and was later an Expedition Consultant to Paul Allen’s Vulcan Inc., during their successful discovery of the USS Indianapolis in 2017.

Curt Newport is also the author of Ready to Dive: Five Decades of Adventure in the Abyss, which chronicles his nearly fifty-year career in search and recovery operations. Ready to Dive is a gritty, blunt, and authentic firsthand subsea account unlike any other.

Available for purchase through Amazon.

Moderator:

Elysia Segal is the Producer of Public Programs at the Intrepid Museum, where she brings science and history to life through creative and educational programming. A NASA Solar System Ambassador and the namesake of main-belt asteroid 17795 Elysiasegal, she co-produces Astro Live for the Museum, and is the host of This Week in Spaceflight for NASASpaceflight.com and the Popular Science Channel. She was the project director of the Museum's Crossing the Line research & performance residency, and has created and performed engaging, theatrical experiences for audiences across the country.

Host:

John “Das” Galloway is a science outreach communicator who specializes in live, interactive video content. He is the creator of the Kerbal Space Academy, where he uses video games as a tool to start science and engineering conversations with viewers of all ages, and VECTORS Virtual Field Trips, which brings real-time interactive video to museums, events, and historical locations. “Das” also serves as a host and producer for NASASpaceflight.com.

Astro Live is supported through a NASA Cooperative Agreement awarded to the New York Space Grant Consortium. The program is also supported, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.